Rivals in the Tudor Court

by D. L. Bogdan

  I bite my lip in impatience. Something has to be done! How long will this drag on?

  In the midst of this I am served a dispatch from a messenger of Derby.

  No doubt Cathy has learned her sister has arrived at court before her and is wondering when she, too, will have a place. Impatient with the thought of such trivialities when I am beset with so many other heady tasks, I tear open the seal.

  It is no such thing. It is a letter from Derby telling me that Cathy has succumbed to the plague. She is dead.

  I am immobilized. Cathy . . . my perfect lady. Born and bred for court life and now . . . now . . .

  It was bound to happen. They all die. They all die. . . .

  I crumple the dispatch in my hand in a moment of fury as I work my jaw. I try to focus on something to no avail. The carpet is a blur. I close my eyes against the burning tears.

  “My lord?” Chapuys takes my elbow. “You are well?”

  I nod, pulling away from him. “The duchess . . . I must see the duchess.”

  She must hear it from me.

  She is in her apartments, lying across her chaise before a dying fire, a piece of embroidery abandoned on her lap. Her eyes are closed, her feet are crossed at the ankle, and the contrary expression adopted in her waking hours has exchanged itself for a softer one. For the first time in many years, I wonder how she occupied herself this evening, what she ate, if she enjoyed her day, what she is embroidering. . . . Silly, useless thoughts, these.

  I reach down, touching her shoulder.

  She stirs, her expression hardening as her gaze fixes itself upon me. Her lips curve into a wry smile. “Why, it’s Thomas Howard. Is it a sign of the apocalypse or are you come to see your wife of your own accord?”

  For a moment, all I can do is stare at her. I want to speak. Something prevents me. I sit beside her on the chaise, reaching out to touch her cheek. She flinches at my touch. My heart lurches. I swallow hard.

  “Elizabeth,” I begin. I bow my head. “Elizabeth . . . it’s Catherine.”

  “The queen?” Her eyes are wide.

  I shake my head. I wish it were the queen, then am struck by a peculiar surge of guilt.

  “Our Catherine,” I amend. “She’s—she’s dead, Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth parts her lips. No sound comes forth. She begins to shake her head. Her breathing is rapid. She rests a slim-fingered hand at her breast as she swings her legs over the side of the chaise and doubles over.

  “H-how?” she chokes.

  “Plague,” I tell her. I hand her the dispatch from Derby. She scans it, then lets it fall to the floor as she covers her face with her hands.

  “Elizabeth . . .” I wrap my arm about her shoulders and attempt to draw her near.

  “No!” she cries, rising, balling her hands into fists. “Don’t touch me!” She turns toward me, pointing at me. “Do you really think to try and comfort me now when you’d just as soon beat me tomorrow?”

  “One has little to do with the other,” I say, baffled.

  Elizabeth shakes her head, then covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Thomas . . .” She sinks to her knees on the carpet. “What have we come to?” She crumples to the floor and begins to rock back and forth, sobbing broken, wretched sobs.

  My heart is pounding. Pain is surging through me. I swallow again and again in an attempt to assuage the sensation of my throat closing. Six children gone, three left. How long? How long before the next one goes? I am cursed to outlive them all, I believe.

  I kneel beside her and take her in my arms. She does not struggle or offer words of protest. “There now, Elizabeth. ’Tis the natural order of things,” I tell her. “Long ago I warned you not to get too wrapped up in them lest it kill you. You know?”

  Elizabeth sobs harder. “I wasn’t there. She died and I wasn’t there. Just like little Edward . . . oh, Thomas, I wasn’t there to hold her hand and brush her hair and bathe her face. I couldn’t even close her eyes.”

  I have closed plenty of eyes and held enough dying hands to last my life through. I have no longing for such things and cannot understand it in Elizabeth. Being as far away from Cathy as possible in her dying moments suits me fine.

  “It is better like this,” I say, almost convincing myself. “This way you can remember her as she was.”

  Elizabeth turns her face up toward me. “Ah, but she was beautiful, wasn’t she, Thomas?”

  I nod as I recall the young woman I had given away in marriage such a short time before. “She was a lady,” I say. “A great lady.”

  I hold my wife for a long time that night.

  Elizabeth Howard

  She is dead. My Cathy is dead and there is nothing I can do about it. She was my light and now that light has been doused by the icy water of reality. Of all my children, it was she with whom I felt the greatest bond. It is unfair and I don’t know what separated her from the rest, save her age and our common bond as females. She was like me in a way. Intelligent and well bred, with no other desire but to be a grand lady and servant to Her Grace. That she should be denied that causes my heart to burn in anguish.

  When my sister the Countess of Westmorland arrives at court, she is full of sympathy. Seeing her only fills me with irrepressible anger as I think of everything she has: the man I wanted, the life I wanted. . . . It is easy for her to offer sympathy, I should think as I regard the well-dressed, well-loved woman before me.

  “Please, sister, understand that I do grieve for you,” she entreats me in my apartments.

  “I’m certain you do,” I say in cold tones. “Tell me, Lady Westmorland, how many children do you and Ral—the earl have now?”

  She lowers her eyes. “Nine, my lady.”

  “And of those nine, how many have you lost?”

  “None, my lady,” she tells me; then, regarding me with wide blue eyes, she shakes her head. “I have been fortunate. Would you resent me for this? How can I control what God doles out? We land where we fall, Elizabeth! I didn’t want to marry Ralph—I knew he was yours. Do you think I wanted to infringe on your happiness? But by the time I married him, you were long married to Lord Norfolk. The decision, as well you know, was far beyond my control. So I married Ralph. And since being married, I have known joy and have been blessed with living children—but again it is purely by chance that I should be blessed with everything I could have hoped for. Our situations could have as easily been reversed.”

  “But they weren’t,” I say, my tone laced with bitterness.

  My sister wrings her hands. “Would you feel better if they were? Would you, as my sister, wish upon me misery? Do you think I revel in yours?” She approaches me, taking me in her arms. I cannot respond to the embrace. I want to. But I can’t. “Oh, my dear lady,” she continues. “Would that you had found some sort of happiness to cling to that you might endure this grief somehow. If you have not, I am not to blame. I come here to offer my condolences and be a comfort to you, but if my presence only serves to bring you more pain, then I shall excuse myself directly.”

  I cannot speak. My sister backs away from me. Her eyes are stricken. I want to beg her not to go, but the words will not come forth. I am rooted in pride and anger and disappointment and cannot be moved.

  She quits the room and I am alone.

  My daughter Mary writes me a letter filled with sweet words and my response is involuntarily curt.

  “I curse myself for not being able to see her, but when I think of her I am only reminded of what is lost,” I lament to the queen. “Mary is so unlike me. Where Cathy was practical and realistic, Mary is whimsical and governed by fancies. I want to see her; I want to speak with her. But any comfort I would endeavor to offer would be forced and empty and she would feel it. I would feel it. There is no connection. Not with her or any of them, save my Cathy. And she is gone. I do not know what kind of parent this makes me; I daresay I am about as good a mother as Thomas is a father, which puts me in a sorry state of affairs indeed.”

  The quee
n, who is so good herself it is impossible for her to conceive of evil in another, holds my hand and shakes her head at me. “Nonsense. I am convinced both you and the duke love your children in your own ways. Sometimes it is very difficult to express. Children are people, Lady Elizabeth, and as with any person, there are going to be qualities that you can approve in some better than others. You must not punish yourself for being unable to be close to your daughter right now. You are a woman struck by grief; you cannot be expected to be all things to all people. Give yourself some time and approach the girl when you are stronger.”

  “I fear I am losing my strength,” I confess. “And Mary is kept so far away from me. Thomas sees to that. When she is not cloistered with my niece and her circle she is with him, sequestered in his apartments. It pains me to admit this, but I believe she is an agent of his.”

  “Of course she is,” the queen says, but her voice bears no malice. “But she is a child. Likely there is nothing she uncovers that he does not already know. And she does not work against me. She keeps him abreast of her cousin’s doings.” The queen sighs. “Quite a heady task for a child.”

  “Mary would do anything for him, she and my son Henry both.” I cannot withhold the bitterness from my tone. “It is unnatural. She makes sheep’s eyes at him like he is . . .” I shake my head. I do not want to say it.

  The queen regards me a long moment. “The duke is . . . a bit awe inspiring. And part of awe is fear. Do you not think that Mary and Henry are as afraid of their father as they are admiring and it is that which makes them so acquiescent?”

  I bow my head, shamed. “I suppose I’m giving her more control than she has,” I say. I offer a heavy sigh. “What hurts most is she is learning all the wrong things and demonstrates a loyalty to all the wrong people.”

  “It hurts to be betrayed,” observes Queen Catherine.

  “Cathy would not have been like that, I do not think,” I say, my voice catching. “She was so eager to be presented to you so that she might serve you. . . .”

  “Best not compare, Lady Elizabeth,” the queen cautions. “It pleased God to call her from this world. She serves a being far greater than my humble self.”

  I bow my head, unable to speak. I am held captive by shattered dreams and do not know how to wrest myself from them.

  “As it is, you are here and my good servant,” she tells me. She draws in a breath as though she wishes to speak but is restraining herself.

  Protocol forbids me to prod her, so I force myself from my wounded reverie to give her my full attention.

  “Lady Elizabeth,” the queen says in low tones, “I am reluctant to remind you of a promise you made me not one year ago, that you would serve me for the benefit of my cause. Are you able to do so, my lady?”

  I blink back tears, touched that she should ask. Rather than being embittered at the thought of being deprived of my grief, I welcome the chance to distract myself with a challenge.

  “You know you have but to command me and I shall accommodate,” I tell her, my voice wavering with fervency.

  The queen rests her fingers beneath my chin, tilting my face toward hers. “I do not want to command you, Elizabeth. I want you to help me because you want to, because you are my friend.”

  Tears clutch my throat. “I am your friend, Your Grace, always. Tell me what to do, so that I might help you.”

  The queen hesitates a moment more, then says, “It is very hard being separated from my husband more often than not,” she tells me. “It is increasingly difficult to obtain the things I desire.” She offers a small laugh. “You know how I adore oranges from my homeland,” she tells me with a reminiscent smile. “They will be in season soon, and Eustace Chapuys has promised to send me some, but the king often prevents him from visiting me personally. Were my dear friend to give you a basket of oranges, you would make certain no one received it but me? I would hate for them to become mislaid; I love them so.”

  I nod in understanding. “Of course, Your Grace,” I assure her, squeezing the hand that holds mine. “Nothing would please me more.”

  With this new charge I am rejuvenated. I will not think of my daughter, the one dead or the one living. I will not think of my Thomas and his Bess. I will not think of anything that brings me pain.

  I will think about baskets of oranges.

  Thomas Howard

  I do not think about my Cathy. To be honest, I didn’t give her much thought to begin with after her marriage was secured; she was safe in the country and, I assumed, since she lived to maturity, she would escape the fate of her siblings. She would have children; she would come to court. Her children would come to court. And so on. But she is gone, and gone with her are my hopes for her. It does me no good to dwell.

  As it is, another death consumes me, though not with grief. With joy, maddening joy. For Wolsey, that pompous, arrogant fool, is dead! I cannot say it enough. The exiled cardinal collapsed on the way to his execution in London. He was brought up on charges of treason; irrefutable evidence was provided stating that he was corresponding with foreign monarchs and Rome that he might enlist their support for his pathetic cause. Well, perhaps the evidence was not irrefutable. But it was strong enough to obtain the signature on his death warrant. But instead of death at the block, he succumbed to a demise fitting for a butcher’s son, twitching in the mud like one of his father’s pigs at slaughter. What a delight! Ah, but it would have been nice to see him beheaded, to look into his eyes and convey in my gaze my ultimate victory over he who endeavored to bring my family and me down since his rise to power. Who is brought down now, Cardinal? Oh, excuse me. I had forgotten; gone is your cardinal’s hat. Seized it was when you failed.

  Thomas More does not share my enthusiasm over his predecessor’s passing.

  “Corrupt as he was, I think he wanted to do right in the end,” he tells me in his soft voice one day when I visit him at his Chelsea home.

  “You never liked him,” I say gruffly. “You side with him now because he was a churchman, and you are nothing if not the Church’s man. Look at you in your quaint choir robe! God’s body, my lord chancellor!” I laugh. “A parish clerk! A parish clerk! You dishonor the king and his office!”

  More laughs but it contains no humor.

  “You cannot tell me you mourn him,” I demand.

  “Perhaps not as one should,” More confesses. “But I am in mourning, Lord Norfolk. We are at the end of something. And I do not know if I am equipped to handle what lies ahead. I fear for the king. If a lion knew his own strength, hard it would be to rule him.” He purses his lips, drawing in a breath. “Wolsey knew that and used it to his advantage. Cromwell does not know it. Boleyn does not know it.” He turns his gaze to me, his eyes so penetrating, my heart begins to pound. “I do not think you know it, either. Now the lion is unfettered and we all will pay dearly for it.” His eyes grow distant. “Yes, my friend, I am in mourning. Wolsey is dead and with him the king’s sense of restraint. There is no question as to who is next. Only when. Perhaps I die today and you tomorrow.”

  I wave a dismissive hand. “Drivel, Thomas,” I tell him, hoping to dispel the feeling of dread pooling in my gut. “All we have is now,” I say. “We must celebrate our victories.” I offer a smile that suddenly seems forced. I bow my head, deciding the best tactic is to completely shift the direction of the conversation. “Your family must prove a distraction. Quite the lot. They are lovely children.”

  “I am very blessed,” he says and seems as relieved as I am. There is a certain respite in useless banter. “As are you. I have seen the girl Mary at court, a beautiful child. So pure.”

  My heart lurches; all feelings of respite depart. “Mary.” I expel a wavering sigh. “Thomas, sometimes when I look at her . . .”

  “Yes?” More prompts. “What do you see when you look at her?”

  I shake my head in bewilderment. What do I see? The pearly essence of her skin, the wistful face, the golden hair I love to brush . . . “I see the embodime
nt of someone else. Not just someone else but something else. The embodiment of another time, another place, a place of innocence . . .”

  “Lord Norfolk, she is not someone else,” More tells me in firm tones. “She is your daughter. See her as she is. Love her as she is. And, for love of God, do not make her pay for your disillusionment upon the realization that she is just an ordinary girl.”

  No, I want to scream, not Mary. She is far from ordinary. She is some kind of siren, a creature I long to both treasure and protect myself from. It is nothing sordid, as God is my witness. . . . Oh, what is this curse that has befallen me?

  I shake my head and clear my throat. This is no conversation for More, the traditional family man. I should have known. Mary is not a topic to be discussed with anyone at any time. There is no one who would understand. I do not understand it myself.

  I turn the conversation toward lighter things. Wolsey’s death. Yes, think of Wolsey’s death, not the children, neither the ones snuggled in their graves nor the one who inspires in me such dark and frightening fancies.

  I will think of Wolsey. And I will revel.

  Elizabeth Howard

  Eustace Chapuys begins sending the baskets to the queen through me with very little trouble. I never look inside. As their communications are in Spanish, I would not be able to understand them anyway and it would do me little good. I am just the messenger and it does my heart good to know I am providing this service to Her Grace, who is pitiably short of friends.

  We meet in a secluded area of gardens, where he passes the basket to me with a smile and pleasant exchange. He is never too personal, is always polite, save for those eyes, which are so keen and scrutinizing that they cause me to avert my eyes with the bashfulness of a girl.

  One warm summer afternoon he meets me, the basket looped over his arm, and I greet him with a smile. It is a beautiful day. The scents of citrus and roses assault me and I draw in a deep breath.