‘I think we had a lucky escape,’ she says. ‘Thank God that they could not agree and Thomas Seymour never brought Mary Howard to court.’
‘Yes,’ I say, disregarding the fact that he was ready to marry her. ‘He saved us.’
‘It leaves him a bachelor, though,’ Nan points out. ‘No man will marry Mary with her father and brother in the Tower, and she giving evidence against them to save her own skin. Thomas Seymour rises up day after day. His family is the leading house in the kingdom and the king loves him. He could choose almost anyone.’
I nod. Of course he will marry Elizabeth if the king gives permission. Then he will be married to the third heir to the Tudor throne. Then I can dance at his wedding. Then I will have to think of him as my son-in-law.
‘Who knows?’ I say lightly. I nod to my ladies to open the doors and we walk from my bedroom into my privy chamber, and into my presence room, and there he is. He turns as he hears the doors open and I realise he has been waiting for me; and there he is.
When I see him a strange thing happens. It is as if I can see no-one else. I don’t even hear the usual noise of the room. It is almost like a dream, like a slip in time, as if all my clocks freeze and everyone has gone and there is nothing but him and me. He turns and sees me, and I am blind to everything but his dark eyes, and his smile, and his gaze upon me as if he too can see no-one else, and I think – ah, thank God, he loves me as I love him, for there could be no smile so warm, so directed, except from a man who loves the woman walking towards him, glowing, her hand outstretched.
‘Good evening, Sir Thomas,’ I say.
He takes my hand, he bows over it, he kisses my fingers. I feel the light touch of his moustache and the warmth of his breath on my hand and the slightest squeeze on my fingers as if to say ‘Beloved . . .’ and then he straightens up and lets me go.
‘Your Majesty,’ he says. ‘I am so happy to see you looking so well.’
As he says the ordinary words his dark gaze is searching my face and I know that he will know that I have put on my best gown and reddened my lips. He sees the shadows under my eyes; he will know that I am grieving for Anne Askew. And he will also know, as a lover always knows, that something very grievous, very bad has happened to me.
He offers me his arm and we walk together, through bowing courtiers, to the window where he gestures with one hand as if to indicate the setting sun and the rise of one penetrating bright star on the horizon.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asks simply. ‘Are you ill?’
‘I can’t tell you here and now,’ I say honestly. ‘But I am not hurt or ill.’
‘The king?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he do?’ His face darkens.
I pinch the inside of his sleeve, the inner part of his elbow. ‘Not here. Not now,’ I remind him. I smile up at him. ‘Is that the pole star? Is that the one that you steer by?’
‘Are you in danger now?’ he demands. ‘Not now,’ I say.
‘Edward says that you were within a hair’s breadth of arrest.’
I tip my head back and laugh. ‘Oh, yes! I saw the warrant.’
His gaze is admiring. ‘You talked yourself to safety?’
I think of my stretching my lips to the bloodstained riding whip. I think of the ivory satin codpiece thrust into my mouth, banging against my teeth. ‘No. It was worse than that.’
He makes a little exclamation. ‘God—’
‘Hush!’ I say rapidly. ‘We’re not safe. Everyone is watching. What’s going to happen to the Howards?’
‘Whatever he wants.’ He takes two impatient steps on the spot, as if he would fling himself out of the room but remembers that there is nowhere that he can go. ‘Whatever he wants, of course. I expect he will kill them. They were planning treason, without a doubt.’
‘God help them,’ I say, though they would have sent me to the scaffold. ‘God help them.’
The double doors are flung open and the king’s enormously bandaged foot comes in first, his great chair and his beaming smile next.
‘God help us all,’ Thomas says, and steps back like the courtier he is, so that my husband can be wheeled towards his possession, his chattel, his smiling wife.
Father and son, Thomas Howard and his son Henry, wait in the Tower to hear what charges they will face. No-one visits them, no-one speaks up for them. Suddenly this old man and his heir, who ruled all of Norfolk, and owned most of the South of England, who rode at the head of thousands of men, who lived their lives like fat spiders in a network of friendships, kinship and obligations, know no-one. They are completely friendless and without allies. The evidence of treason against Henry Howard is overwhelming. He was fool enough to boast that he had a great claim to the throne. His own sister Mary Howard, still smarting from his command that she must whore herself out to the king, accuses him. She swears on oath that he ordered her to marry Thomas Seymour to get to court, and to become the king’s mistress. She told him that she would rather cut her throat than be so dishonoured. Now she is cutting his.
Even his father’s mistress, the notorious Bess Holland, gives evidence against him. The young man, well-hated by those who should love and protect him, is incriminated daily by his friends and lovers, and finally by his own coat of arms, which Thomas Wriothesley, son of a herald, grandson of a herald, declares has been fraudulently based on the arms of Hereward the Wake – a leader of England five hundred years ago.
‘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.’