Secrets of the Tudor Court (45 page)

He emits a heavy sigh, ignoring the question, just as I expect. “My drawer…in the desk over there. There is something I want you to have.”

I rise and make way to the desk, opening the drawer. My manner is distracted and angry. I pull it harder than I should and it slides out so far it gets caught. I cannot push it back in.

“Never mind that,” says Norfolk, his tone weary. “Look inside.”

I look. Tears form a lump in my throat. I reach down to finger the circlet, the little silver circlet with the seed pearls that he presented me when I was eleven years old, the circlet I had thrown at him in anger on my wedding night.

“You kept it,” I murmur.

“I carried it into battle with me,” he tells me, coughing. He taps his chest with a slim finger. “I placed it under my armor.”

I sit beside him again, fingering the circlet, so dainty, so perfect for a maiden. Norfolk takes it from me, admiring it a moment himself. He reaches out, cupping my cheek, wiping away tears with his thumb before slowly removing my hood. When my hair is exposed he runs his fingers through it. “That hair of yours,” he says in an absent way, a half smile playing on his lips. I try to laugh but it catches in my throat. Norfolk places the circlet on my head, keeping his warm hands on either side of my face.

“Mary,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “It was always you. Only you.”

It is a love I do not understand. Nor do I understand my reciprocation of it.

So I do not try. I crawl into bed beside him, resting my head on his chest, wrapping my arm about his middle. He draws me close, holding me a long while. It is our first true embrace. There is nothing expected from it. No more is anyone being manipulated; no more is power being sought; no more is ambition fueling Norfolk’s every breath. There are no more dreams or hopes. All these years of pain and struggling and fighting have brought us to this: a list of fruitless no mores.

We hold each other a long while. I find myself enveloped in death’s mantle; I cannot shrug it off.

When I leave him, my anger faded to a numbness some may call peace, I know I will not see my lord Norfolk again. It does not matter so much. Wherever he goes I will soon follow.

So it has always been with Norfolk and me.

EPILOGUE

Elizabeth Stafford Howard

December 1555

A
year later my daughter Mary, Duchess of Richmond, joined her father in death. Her appetite dwindled; her stomach was relentlessly upset; pain stalked her in her waking hours and she found little relief. It was as though she lived for the challenges he presented her with; so accustomed was she to strife that when freed of it at last, she did not know how to thrive. So she did not. Like a Tudor rose, she withered and died.

She rests beside her husband, her Harry. I do not know if she would have rather been beside Norfolk, but I could not have suffered it. Her entire life belonged to him. Perhaps the solace that forever evaded her will at last be found lying beside the man who would have loved her, had fate been a little kinder.

I bury her with four jewels: her wedding ring, a little opal ring, a miniature bearing the face of a violet-eyed man, and, upon her golden head, a little silver circlet inlaid with seed pearls.

How young she looked in her casket. No, I will not think of it.

So here I am. I outlived them all—a goal one should not strive for, I have learned. I buried three of my four children, my husband (what a relief!)—even my rival, poor Bess Holland. I suppose I loved them. If I could not show it, it was only because I was not able; my own suffering eclipsed everything else, depriving my family and me of the opportunity to know my true self. I don’t know. I miss little Mary, though; her sweet unassuming ways, her understated courage, her beliefs that, despite everything, remained uncompromising. I miss what was. I miss what will never be.

Sometimes I wonder if I could have saved her. No doubt I could not. There is naught to be done for a woman but to await the Lord’s embrace.

No one will remember her. The annals of history will record her thus: Mary Howard Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond; wife of Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII; daughter of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk.

They will not remember that she narrowly escaped being the seventh bride of mad King Henry. Too many others take precedence; their portraits line the halls of the palaces, faces staring out with flat, lifeless eyes. Anne, Catherine, even Norfolk…images to haunt the mind for centuries to come. But like Holbein’s drawing, Mary’s life is sketchy.

I stand at St. Michael’s Church, Framlingham, my daughter’s resting place. It is the strangest thing. Whenever I am here I see a rainbow. It arches over the tomb, a myriad of colors stretching down for an embrace, like God’s great arms. I squint. It is fading—just one more glimpse…

So brief is its beauty; now it is gone.

A READING GROUP GUIDE

SECRETS OF THE TUDOR COURT

D. L. Bogdan

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are included to
enhance your group’s reading of D. L. Bogdan’s
Secrets of the Tudor Court
!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Discuss how Mary’s character changes throughout the novel.
   
2. Who were Mary’s biggest influences?
   
3. How did Mary’s regard for the king change throughout the novel?
   
4. Discuss Mary’s fascination with Norfolk’s hands.
   
5. How do you think Norfolk regards Mary? What were the major contributors to his persona?
   
6. What were, in your opinion, the three biggest turning points in the novel?
   
7. Analyze The Kiss.
   
8. Compare and contrast Mary’s relationships with Harry, Cedric, and Master Foxe. Of these three, who would you consider “the love of her life”?
   
9. Did your opinion of Mary’s mother change throughout the novel? If so, how?
   
10. Why do you think the novel was told in the first person, present tense? Is this a writing style you like?
    
11. Why does Mary refer to her father as “Norfolk” throughout the novel? How does this affect her view of him?
    
12. Three themes are present in the novel: self-preservation, the rainbow, and the circlet. What is the relevance of these three themes to the story? Why do you think I chose to expound on them?
    

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2010 by D. L. Bogdan

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ISBN: 978-0-7582-6014-7