Secrets of the Tudor Court (37 page)

I want to make things sound as positive as possible.

We arrive at Mountjoy House, where Norfolk awaits to collect Thomas. He makes a show of exclamations over all of the children; how they have grown, how lovely the girls are, how strong and sure young Thomas seems. He promises them that life will be wonderful here; indeed, if they are only obedient they shall be much favored by Her Majesty...

I do not listen after this point. I have heard it all before.

When it comes time to take my leave, young Thomas embraces me.

"I will never forget you, Aunt Mary," he says. "I will never forget your grace or your wisdom. I will never forget your love for us."

"My dear lord," I tell him, holding him to me. "Never have I been so proud of anyone."

We disengage.

I do not speak to Norfolk. I do not trust myself, and as I want to avoid violence in front of the children, find it is best to quit Mountjoy House, quit London.

Indeed, quit it all.

I hear tales of Norfolk and the family through Frances. She writes of the beautiful coronation banquet my father supervised for Her Majesty. She writes of young Thomas being the youngest ever to be created Knight of the Bath the day before, and how fine he looked in his regalia.

Through her I learn that Thomas serves Gardiner--vile Gardiner, now named lord chancellor--as his page, while Henry continues his education under the supervision of a stern priest named John White.

Disgusted, I toss the letter aside and lie under my quilt at Reigate, tracing the children's names, thinking, as I should not, of the past...the magical past...

In October Queen Mary presides over Parliament with the proposal that the marriage between her parents be legitimized. It all seems rather pointless to me, but I am not there and I suppose it is too trying to care.

To my relief, however, I learn that Lady Jane Grey is to be pardoned. At least the queen has some heart. She must see that the girl was a pawn, as most women are. I hope the girl will be released soon and allowed to live out her life in some semblance of peace.

But when the queen pardons Lord Suffolk, the duke proves himself to be as dense as they come, and proclaims his daughter Jane queen again, rallying an army led by Thomas Wyatt to support the claim. It is his hope that the country will support Jane in favor of the "Spanish-loving" Mary, who signed a marriage treaty with Philip of Spain on 12 January.

I retch when I hear of another father's thoughtlessness toward his daughter. How can he be so foolish? Now there is no hope...

Norfolk is named lieutenant-general of the army sent to disperse Wyatt's insurgents at Rochester on 22 January--Norfolk, who is eighty-one years old. I cannot believe the queen sees fit to send him, out of all the able-bodied men at her disposal. In Norfolk's triumphant letter to me, he tells me that no one is quite as capable in the area of military strategy, which is why she favored him with this responsibility.

Norfolk cannot predict that at Rochester Bridge some of his own forces would decide to switch sides and join up with the charismatic Wyatt. Norfolk could not seem to contrive of a strategy to combat that one, and retreats, retiring to Kenninghall, humiliated.

The queen's forces prove victorious on 7 February, however, when Wyatt surrenders. If Norfolk could have held out a little longer, perhaps he would have been able to credit himself with the triumph. But it was not to be.

On 12 February, while I lie under my quilt and watch the snow fly, Lady Jane and her husband are executed for high treason, though her only crime was being born to the worst of people.

Again, all I can do is thank God I am not present to see more lives submitted to the axe.

Jane's father is executed on 23 February.

So this is how Queen Mary's reign begins--with death.

In March I learn the worst, the news that sends me again to my bed, where I will find no comfort. Princess Elizabeth, my clever, beautiful, black-eyed cousin, has been sent to the Tower, where so many Howards before her have suffered. She is suspected of participating in the Wyatt rebellion.

I remember my impression of the young woman with the beautiful Howard hands. The young woman I was so certain would be queen of England in her time. I was convinced it was ordained by God.

"What does it all mean?" I cry to Peggy, who holds my hand as I retch into a basin. All I can see is Princess Elizabeth, a tawny-haired babe in my arms. Her little hand curls about my finger..."God, what is it all for? Is she to follow her mother to the block? Oh, Anne, my beautiful Anne, were I but stronger I would have seen you spared!"

Uncle Will sits at my bedside, swabbing my fevered brow with a cool cloth. "Please, my little bird, please. You are mad with grief." His eyes seek out his wife. "Should I write the duke?"

Peggy glares. "So he can finish her?" She shakes her head, drawing in a wavering breath. Her voice is soft, speculative. "My lord, how many heartbreaks can one person take, d'you believe?"

Uncle Will does not respond. He gathers me in his arms, commencing to rock, singing gently. I lose myself in his voice.

April brings about Wyatt's execution--ah, Mary is her father's child!--but Elizabeth, to my eternal relief, is spared and transferred to Woodstock, where she shall live in isolation. As she always has.

I give thanks to God. He is sparing her for her own reign. I know; somehow I have been given the knowledge that she will endure. She will be what her mother and cousin could not. She will be queen. Someday. In her time.

It occurs to me in the wake of these events that I no longer want to hear anything more about court, not even about the tragedies and triumphs of my own family. Indeed, I do not think I can bear it.

Norfolk sends me letters. Where am I? he is wondering. Why am I not with him at Kenninghall? I am overdue a visit.

Peggy and I watch the letters burn in the hearth; the parchment curls up and blackens. My father's hurried scrawl is obliterated in the flames.

I do not write him back. I lie under my quilt, my Howard quilt, and think of the people who loved me.

I
receive the news in August.

He is dying. I repeat the phrase to myself over and over.
He is dying.
Somehow it doesn't seem possible that he should die. He has outlasted them all; five of Henry's queens, Henry himself, Wolsey, Cromwell, Surrey, Bess, King Edward, Henry Fitzroy...Harry...

Now he will join them, wherever they have gone--if indeed we go anywhere at all. A wry smile curves my lips; years ago I would have chastised myself for the thought. Now I do not shut out what is real. Reality has always pursued me. So I yield to it. In this perhaps Reality and I will make our peace.

I arrive at Kenninghall--running to him again--and draw in a breath as I enter the chambers. I have imagined this scene before many times; a strange and reluctant morbid fantasy. In a dynamic confrontation, Norfolk lies dying, beseeching me for forgiveness; I grant it with a heart as pure as a prayer, rising above my base instincts so that he may be afforded peace.

It will not play out that way, I am certain.

He is in bed, that much is a given--a great mahogany four-poster with a beautiful blue velvet canopy. He looks tiny. It occurs to me for the first time how much this small man has done, how many lives he has raised high, how many lives he has shattered. To think what one small man might achieve...

I approach and curtsy. He is dying, after all. I must try to be gracious.

He gestures for me to sit beside him. I remain standing. Years of experience have taught me not to get too close to Norfolk. I do not know how much strength he has left in him, but I am certain there is enough to strike out at me like a coiled snake.

He purses his lips and eases himself up into a sitting position. "I think you have been avoiding me," he says with his almost laugh.

I say nothing.

"I'll be leaving you, it seems." He averts his head to look out the window, out at the world. "You will be free."

I close my eyes. Anger hot as wine surges through my veins.

"Free?" I breathe, incredulous. This will not do, I tell myself. I am supposed to exemplify grace and composure. But the words come, pulled forth by a force greater than I am. "I can never be free. You have made sure of that. All my life..." Tears clutch my throat. I allow them to stream down my cheeks unchecked. "You have taken away everyone and everything that has ever meant a thing to me. Mother, Harry, Anne, George, Kitty, Surrey, Master Foxe..." I shake my head. I still can't believe the length of the list, even after all this time. "And the children, my beloved children..." My shoulders quake with sobs. "Now you dare say I am free." I offer a bitter smile. "Free to do what? Marry? Marry whom? I am thirty-five years old and in poor health. I am known forever as the woman who condemned her brother to death and her father to prison. I am regarded as little better than Jane Boleyn."

He says nothing. His black eyes are alert; indeed, he does not look like he is dying. His expression bears the same calm indifference it always did; his lips twist into that same sardonic half smile. The only indication that he is unwell lies in the fact that he is abed in his nightclothes. He would never have presented himself before anyone thus when he enjoyed good health.

"So you do hate me, then," he says, his voice soft, almost as though he is hoping to satisfy a point of curiosity.

"I should," I tell him. "But no. Stripping me of everyone deserving of my love ensured that I would always need you, that I would always be yours. You were the only man, the only
being
I was ever permitted to love." I pause, allowing him to appreciate the profundity of the statement. "So I did love you, with all my
soul
I loved you. So much so that I blinded myself to your savagery and indifference. What I allowed myself to see was justified or, at the very least, explained. And now, now when I can hate you, when indeed I
yearn
to hate you, I cannot. Too much has come to pass between us--a lifetime of fear and awe and the love that you took and twisted."

He flinches at this. His head lolls to the side. He closes his eyes. For one panicked moment I fear my outburst has been too much for him and this will be my last memory of this man--this man who, despite everything, I still love.

"My lord?" No response. "Father!" I cry in fear.

His eyes flutter open. He draws in a sigh. "It was not your fault, you know."

"What?" I ask, sitting beside him now. I take his thin hand in my own, recalling how I used to fear its power while marveling at its perfection. Now it is a gnarled patchwork of veins and wrinkles and age spots. An old man's hand.

"Surrey." He regards me. Tears stand bright in his eyes; they are like liquid onyx. "The trial. My imprisonment. It was not your fault."

I am unable to mask my bitterness. "You tell me this now? Is this a recent epiphany or did you enjoy my years of guilt?"

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.

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.