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 court 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.’