Rivals in the Tudor Court

by D. L. Bogdan

  She does not seem to care so much for this vein and nuzzles back against my chest. “Da, will you tell me a story?”

  Confounded by the request, I try to summon to mind something that doesn’t involve blood and dragons and battles, stories that Henry and Little Thomas would thrive on, but not this delicate girl.

  “Tell me about the faery folk,” she prompts.

  I swallow an immediate onset of tears. I stroke her hair a long moment, then reach over to pull the throw blanket strewn over the arm of the settle atop us. In this little nest I hold her close and commence to tell my tale.

  “I met a faery once, you know,” I say in husky tones.

  “You did?” She tilts her face toward me. “A real live faery?”

  “Yes,” I confirm. “A real live faery.” At once all discomfort at her closeness melts away as I draw her near. I cannot seem to hold her close enough, tight enough. My heart is filled with emotions I cannot wrangle with or understand, but it does not matter. She is the closest thing to Heaven I will ever see. I must hold her while I am allowed.

  “She was very beautiful,” I begin. “She had hair the color of autumn leaves and her eyes were like the twilit sky on the eve of a storm—a sort of honeyed green. She was very tall and long limbed and I loved her, oh, how I loved her from the very first moment I set eyes on her. . . .”

  “What happened to her?” she asks me in her soft, lilting voice.

  At once I am drawn from my reverie; for a moment I had forgotten that I was speaking out loud. I clear my throat. “She—danced with me a while. She took me to her gardens and there she showed me how to sing and play and . . . and just be.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . .” Tears again clutch my throat. “Then she was called back to the faery country, a place mortals cannot go. I watched her disappear behind the mist . . . and I—I could not follow. . . . She was gone.”

  “D’you think she’ll return someday?” Mary asks.

  I recall the day of Mary’s birth, the blinding light, the vision in the corner of the room. . . . I am transported to another time, another world. My princess stands before me that first day we plight our troth at Westminster. I am sliding the ring on her slim finger. . . . I see her on her deathbed, devastated by the consumption . . . the blood. . . . Oh, God . . . And then this child again, this child in my arms, in my heart, in my blood . . . more blood . . . I do not understand. . . .

  “She did return,” I tell her, cupping her face between my hands. My voice is taut with urgency. Tears obscure my vision. “She is with me now but, oh, why like this?” I utter in a tortured whisper. “I do not understand! Help me understand! It isn’t fair! God, it isn’t fair!”

  “What isn’t fair?” The question assaults me like a whip across the back. I am drawn from my bizarre fancy and can only stare at her, her little head cocked to the side, her eyes wide with bewildered fear.

  I drop my hands, rendered helpless and confused and impatient by this whole interlude. “Mary.” Yes, this child is Mary. She is just Mary. There is nothing more to her than that. “Mary, you’d best get to bed now,” I tell her, collecting myself. My voice is calm, clear, and cool. “You are too old to be fretting over nightmares and far too old for these demonstrations.”

  Mary regards me a long moment, her face fraught with such profound sadness that I am forced to avert my head. She slides off my lap, backing away from me. “Yes, my lord. Sorry, my lord.” She bows her head. “Good night, Your Grace.”

  I cannot speak.

  Long after she departs I sit on the settle, curled under the blanket, dreaming of the faery country and a time long gone.

  That spring, Elizabeth and I take to Norfolk House in London to fulfill our duties at court. The children are left behind at Kenninghall because a new outbreak of the dreaded sweating sickness is ravaging the country.

  Bess trembles when I leave her.

  “Oh, my lord, should one of the children take ill, I shall die! What’s to be done should the sickness come to Kenninghall?” she asks me in her little-girl voice.

  “All that can be done,” I tell her. “We’ve a competent physician about,” I add, then shudder as I recall the “competence” of the physician who bled my other children . . . but they are no more. It does no good to think of them. “There’s no use fretting,” I go on. “What is meant to be will happen despite any worrying on our part.”

  Bess blinks back tears. “I’m so frightened, Your Grace. So many have been lost. This dreaded sickness hits anyone . . . oh, Your Grace,” she wraps her arms about my middle, burying her head in my chest. “Do take care.”

  I stroke her abundant curls. “Do not worry, my Bess. Don’t worry,” I soothe, touched by her concern. I pull away, cupping her face between my hands. Her wide brown eyes are the picture of innocence. “I can survive anything.”

  Bess leans into my hand and smiles. “I think you can,” she says, her little voice registering a sort of awe as she turns her head to kiss my palm.

  I draw her forward, bestowing a fierce kiss upon her perfect mouth as though to remind her of who owns her, then turn on my heel and, without looking back, quit her chambers.

  It is best not to think of Bess when I am away from her.

  Keeping a place for everything, and everything in its place. That is the key.

  In London my ability to survive anything is put to the test, for almost immediately upon my arrival I am taken with the sickness. I do not realize it at first. Always riddled with leg pain, I did not think it odd when the pain traveled up my body, assaulting my shoulders, arms, and belly with a churning ache that set me into such a state of nausea, I was constantly swallowing the bitter bile rising in my throat.

  Every day, there is news of someone else being taken by the dreaded sweat. Sir Edward Poyntz, my nephew William Carey, and Sir William Compton of the king’s privy chamber perish one and all. My niece and current jewel of the family, Anne, took ill with her father, my idiot brother-in-law Thomas Boleyn, but the king’s physician, Dr. William Butts, tended them and they recover at Hever.

  The little duke of Richmond is sent farther north for his protection while Princess Mary seeks a safe haven at my former residence of Hunsdon.

  While this torrent of sickness rains upon us, I think of the offices vacated by the dead that can be filled by able-bodied Howards.

  “You are soulless,” Elizabeth tells me one night when I am reviewing the options aloud.

  “Not soulless, my dear, just practical,” I return, annoyed at her summation of my character.

  As it is, my plans for arranging the lives of my family members are put on hold. While making my way to my apartments that evening I am seized by a pain so fierce that it takes hold of my body like a great hand, squeezing me till I moan in agony. I am burning, searing hot. My shirt is soaked through with sweat and I cling to a tapestry hanging on the hall, drawing in shuddering breaths, determined to make it to my rooms awake.

  I stagger down the hall, leaning on the wall for support. Everything is a blur. My thoughts come to me sluggish and jumbled.

  “Your Grace . . .” A voice. Somewhere . . . a voice.

  I turn my stiff and aching neck to its source. My stepmother stands before me, her face wrought with concern.

  “Your Grace, you are ill. We must get you to your rooms,” she says. “Come now.” She wraps her arm about my waist. “Lean on me.”

  “You are my mother?” I ask in a small voice as I allow my weight to fall upon this strong-shouldered woman. She half drags me down the hall to my rooms.

  “Now, wouldn’t that be a trick, considering I am younger than you are,” she laughs as she helps me into bed. “Come!” she is calling to some unknown presence. “Fetch blankets for His Grace! He must sweat this out!”

  A darkness is creeping in. I want to yield to it, oh, how I want to! It is warm and soft there. I do not have to think or plot or plan. I can just sleep.

  “Don’t you dare go to sleep, Th
omas Howard.” Another voice. Ah, yes. How could I fail to recognize Elizabeth’s uncompromising tone? I feel a slight slap on my cheek. “You stay awake, you hear me? You stay here.”

  My eyes flutter open and try to fix on my wife’s face. I cannot focus. She is a blur obstructed by blazing white light.

  “That’s it, Lady Elizabeth,” my stepmother is saying. “Keep him awake. That is the only way to outlive this thing. If they can stay awake for the first twenty-four hours, they will survive.”

  “I can survive,” I mumble.

  “Of course you can,” Elizabeth says. “Isn’t that the Howard motto? Besides, you are far too stubborn to leave this earth a moment before you are ready. Don’t close your eyes, Thomas! Stay awake!”

  I start at her voice. The pain is unbearable and the heat, oh, this intolerable heat.

  “So many are dying,” a gentle male voice is saying. I recognize it to be the king’s physician, Dr. Butts, the same man who treated my niece Anne. “And the duke is not a young man.”

  “I am in finer form than most men half my age!” I cry. I begin to writhe under the oppressive blankets. I want to tear them off me. I am so bloody hot!

  “Yes, you are,” the doctor agrees with a chuckle. “And God willing it is that fine form that carries you through this.”

  “God willing,” my stepmother chimes in.

  The darkness seeps in again. My head lolls to the side and I begin to drift off. Somewhere, there is singing. Is it the faeries? Are they calling me? Princess? Oh, Princess, have you come to take me to your strange country? A form in the mist.

  “Is it you?” I murmur, reaching out, hoping to part the mist that forever separates us and feel her slender hand in mine once more.

  Elizabeth squeezes my hand. “Stay awake, damn you!” she cries.

  “We shall give him some treacle and setwell,” my stepmother is saying. “And if he makes it through this first day, I’ve found it best for the victims to fast sixteen hours and lie abed at least twenty-four. But of course we should not think too far beyond these first crucial hours.”

  There she is again! She stands in the corner of the room, her arms outstretched, a trace of a smile curving her lips upward. . . . I sit up, throwing the blankets aside. I cannot speak. I reach out. Find me! I am here! Find me!

  She approaches, but as she does so becomes smaller and smaller. I draw back, confused.

  She is not my princess but my own little girl.

  “Mary . . .” I murmur when I find my voice, torn from my throat in a painful rasp.

  Elizabeth exchanges a look with my stepmother.

  “Who is he asking after?” the Dowager Duchess asks.

  Elizabeth is silent a long moment, then offers a shrug. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  I collapse against the bed. It is no use. Someone is drawing the blankets up over my shoulders. I want to sleep; why won’t they just let me sleep? My eyelids are so heavy. . . .

  “Stay awake, Thomas,” Elizabeth is urging, patting my cheeks again and again.

  I force my eyes open and fix my gaze on her face. “Elizabeth,” I mutter. “Steadfast Elizabeth.”

  As the minutes turn into hours, I fight. The poison pours out of my body in the form of the sickening sweat, and the stench of death fills the room. But I will beat death. I will show God that this Howard will choose when to die.

  When I reach the twenty-four-hour point in the illness’s course, it is decided that I will indeed live.

  Strength begins to flow back into me, surging through my limbs like wine. I can move without being gripped by pain. My stomach, churning and empty, is still protesting the thought of food, but I force broth down my throat to keep up my strength.

  My stepmother, exercising her rights as mistress of the household, makes certain I am kept abed for a week.

  While recovering, I receive a most unusual gift.

  “From Her Grace at Waltham,” says Elizabeth as she places the wriggling blanket in my arms.

  “Why on earth would the queen send me a present?” I demand.

  My wife shrugs. “God knows it isn’t because of your loyalty to her cause,” she says.

  “I see you’ve returned from doting wife to disagreeable self in no time,” I observe, and unwrap the blanket to reveal a greyhound pup with a gold collar studded with emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.

  Its resemblance to my favorite childhood dog, Rain, the dog that my grandfather slew in a rage, causes my throat to constrict with tears. My lip quivers. I swallow hard. The pup climbs up my chest, wagging its tail, and I find myself stroking its soft scruff and cooing at it like an idiot.

  “It comes with this dispatch,” Elizabeth tells me as she hands me an unopened letter bearing the queen’s seal.

  To His Grace, the good lord Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk,

  My good lord, it has come to our attention that you have taken ill with this dread plague that smites England like the hand of God. Upon learning of your recovery we fell to our knees, giving thanks to God. You are most fortunate to have your beloved wife at your side.

  Please accept this token of our esteem and appreciation for all of your services over the years past. We know you to be a good Catholic man, a faithful servant who adheres to tradition. We put our trust in your continued services and constancy and look forward to seeing you at court upon our return.

  God bless and keep you,

  Catherine R.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I mutter, tossing the letter aside and turning my head away before Elizabeth can note the tears I am blinking back.

  “Good Catholic . . . faithful servant . . . constant,” Elizabeth is saying, her voice bitter with sarcasm. “Either Her Grace remains willfully ignorant of your many charms or she has a startling command of sarcasm that I was not aware of. In that case she should be congratulated.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” I ask her.

  Elizabeth smiles; it is as hard as her tone. “But I am your devoted wife, here to tend your every need. Until the court returns, I will remain by your side.”

  I shake my head. The pup is wriggling about so much that I hand him to her. She softens once the creature is in her arms, smiling upon it as though it is a baby.

  “It is sweet of her, Thomas,” she says. “She’s always thought so highly of you. Even when I was a little girl . . . I remember looking at you once when you were jousting and she asked me to pray for you. She was always thinking of you, wishing you the best.”

  I bite my lip, touched by my wife’s reverie. Trying to keep the conversation from swaying to the queen, I ask, “And what were you thinking the day you saw me at the joust?”

  Elizabeth strokes the pup’s silky ears. Her eyes mist over. “I-I was thinking of how handsome you were, much more so than the young lads the other maidens were swooning over.” She raises her head, meeting my eyes. Tears course down her cheeks as she reaches out to cover my hand with hers. “How did we ever get from there to here?”

  I am silent. I do not know how to answer her question, how to explain to her that what has happened was meant to happen. How to explain that I should go mad if I could not keep Bess as a counterweight to Elizabeth and a distraction from something so disturbing that I dare not allow myself to think of it.

  I clear my throat, squeezing her hand. “I suppose I should name this little thing. What do you think of Storm?”

  “It is a good name,” my wife says in quiet tones. “Living in this storm of the court in these uncertain times . . .” She lowers her eyes.

  “It’s a strong name,” I say. “Take him to the nursery. The nieces and nephews should enjoy a turn with him. There’s a sweet little girl there just out of swaddling bands—what did my brother Edmund name her? Catherine. How could I forget? Yes, I think they call her Kitty. Show the pup to Kitty; she’ll love it.”

  Were we at home I would have ordered the dog to be taken to our nursery but as it is, it may as well receive attention from the children
of Norfolk House.

  Elizabeth quits the room, her expression soft and wistful, causing my heart to lurch in unexpected pain. There is nothing to be done. It is best not to think on her overmuch.

  When she has departed, I take up the queen’s dispatch once more, rereading it, the words faithful servant and constancy standing out like vicious taunts, racking my conscience and making me wonder how well King Henry has estimated the strength and stubbornness of his wife and adversary, Queen Catherine of Aragon.

  With the sweating sickness on the decline, the court returns to London and in October the papal legate Cardinal Campeggio arrives. Anne and the king are more in love than ever, which, while it makes me sick, favors the family with elevations that otherwise would not be achieved. Meantime I have taken to arranging marriages for my children. Thomas is betrothed to my ward, Elizabeth Marney (that was quite the ordeal; I had to solicit her wardship at her father’s deathbed, but the end result was worth the pains. The child will bring a great deal of wealth to the family). It is a good match and, from the look of the little girl, should warrant many grandchildren. As for my daughter Cathy, now comely at the age of fifteen, I have found for her a groom in the Earl of Derby, Edward Stanley.

  She will be a good wife; she always had the makings of a great lady. Her future will be assured and as a countess she will be secured a place at court. Hopefully, she will soon wait upon her own cousin. I scrunch up my shoulders at the thought. Imagine!

  With their futures in order, there is but to think of Henry and Mary.

  “The solution for our Henry is simple,” says my niece Anne, flashing her black eyes at me as I visit her one evening at Durham House. We are in the parlor playing dice. “He should wed the Princess Mary. God knows all her other betrothals have fallen through. The Spanish brat is cursed.”

  My heart lurches at the thought. “I’m not the idiot Buckingham was,” I tell her in harsh tones. “I will not be accused of trying to place myself too close to the throne. I like my head where it is, thank you very much. Best not mention that again.”