Rivals in the Tudor Court

It is certain. My niece Anne Boleyn will be queen. It is just a matter of time and stratagems, soon to be sorted out by England’s craftiest men, myself among them. Anne reigns in all but name as it is and, upon her creation as Marquess of Pembroke, prepares herself to accompany the king on a state visit to France to be presented before its king.

She is a tiresome little bitch, is Anne, and hard to manage. Her pride and certainty in her impending queenhood gives her a hauteur and insolence that can barely be tolerated. She no longer defers to me as the wise uncle but treats me as she would a dog, hurling insults at me when her bidding is not done. I bite her back; I will not let this tempestuous woman get the best of me.

Her demands increase with each passing day and all of them are met by her doting lover. It is not enough to have the world torn apart for her sake, but she must make life as uncomfortable as possible for everyone around her in the process. Lady Anne is not satisfied with the suite of jewels designed for her visit to France; she wants the queen’s—pardon, the Princess Dowager’s, as she is now known—state jewels. I am assigned the unpleasant task of retrieving them from the exiled Catherine of Aragon.

With a small retinue I journey north, rehearsing a number of different tactics in which to secure the jewels from this obstinate, pitiable, admirable creature.

She receives me in her presence chamber, sitting under a canopy of state as though still queen and addressed as such by her menial little staff. It’s a sight to bring tears to one’s eyes, but I blink them away as I approach her, bending into a deep bow.

Her lips curve into an ironic smile. “Rise, Lord Norfolk,” she commands. Her accent still plays upon my ears like a wistful melody.

I right myself, daring to look her in the face. She has aged terribly. The exile has caused her to lose the weight she had gained and she sits a wraith on her throne. Her breathing is short and uneven and she furrows her brow as though in pain.

“So,” she says, “you have come to visit your old friend.”

I swallow hard. “How fares Your Highness?”

She purses her lips. “I am kept separated from my daughter, who is ill and needs a mother’s ministrations. I am told I am no longer a queen but a princess dowager. My misled and manipulated husband has put me aside for lust of another and intends to place upon her head my crown. How, Lord Norfolk, do you think I fare?”

I pause. “You look well,” I say feebly.

“Please do not disrespect me any more than you already have by lying.” She emits a sigh. “Now. Why have you come?”

“I come, Your Highness, to collect the state jewels that are in your possession. The king wishes their return,” I tell her in amiable tones.

“The king does not wish it,” she corrects me. “You do not argue with this, I see. Your Anne Boleyn wishes it, does she not?”

I nod. “She does. For her visit to France.”

Princess Catherine shakes her head. “No. I will not surrender to her the jewels my husband gave me out of love. I will not allow them to adorn a person who is a reproach to Christendom and is bringing scandal and disgrace upon the king through his taking her to such a meeting as this in France.”

I heave a sigh of exasperation. “Princess—”

“Queen, Lord Norfolk!” Her voice is sharp. “You are addressing an anointed queen made by God, not man. Leave us!” she cries to her small assemblage of attendants and guards. When we are alone she rises from her throne of state and approaches me. She reaches up, cupping my face between her slim hands. “You have fallen very low, Lord Norfolk,” she tells me, her face wrought with sorrow. “And I weep for you.” She swipes my hair aside from my forehead and strokes my cheek. Her touch brings hot tears to my eyes. I cannot look away. “You were supposed to be his friend, but ambition and greed have eclipsed even your loyalty to the preserving of the king’s soul. Now you risk not only your eternal reward but your sovereign’s by pushing your niece to this terrible apex, which will amount to nothing but disaster, I promise you.” She pauses, then adds in a small voice. “You were my friend and I loved you well. You saved me from the Scots at Flodden, remember?”

“It was a different time,” I say.

She drops her hands to her sides. “A man of the changing times. I imagine it was a different time as well, then, when you treated your wife with the respect due her. You make the duchess suffer as I suffer. I pray if nothing else you will be led to do right by her—”

“Highness, the jewels,” I interpose, impatient with her monologue. I’ve no time for self-examination and guilt. The choices I have made have all been to serve a greater purpose and I owe no one an explanation for them.

She scowls. “Tell my husband that I will not surrender the jewels unless he commands it directly.”

“Highness, you make your life very difficult,” I tell her.

“You are dismissed from my presence, Lord Norfolk,” she tells me. “I will continue to pray for your soul.”

I bow once more and turn to leave.

“Thomas!”

I stop short at her call. I turn.

Her blue eyes are luminous with tears. “Why has my champion abandoned me?”

I stride toward her, seizing her hands in mine. I sink to my knees. “Dear lady, I love you well. Had things been different, had he never set eyes on . . . I had no choice. I am sorry, Highness. Truly.”

She disengages herself from me, shaking her head, her face registering an expression of mingled sadness and horror. “You say you love me. I imagine you believe you love many people. But when you have ‘no choice’ but to abandon them, you will. Every last one of them, till all that remains is you. All alone. What will you do, Thomas, when there is no one left to abandon? Will you be sorry then, too?”

Fear surges through me as I entertain the thought, then dismiss it with impatience. My God, the audacity of this woman! It is women like her and Elizabeth and Anne that make this world a living hell.

I part my lips to speak, but she lays a hushing finger upon them.

Her voice catches. “Go, do your duty unto your king as your conscience advises,” she whispers.

I leave, my mission a failure.

I suppose it does not matter. In the end the king commands her to relinquish the jewels and she has no choice but to obey.

King Henry gets what he wants.

Elizabeth Howard

No one will help me. My children are kept away, save young Thomas, who seeks no one out. He is a quiet, brooding child with little use for anyone. Henry, though married in name to the Earl of Oxford’s daughter, Frances de Vere, lives at the French court with the king’s bastard, Fitzroy, trying his best to be Thomas incarnate, while Mary remains “safe” at her father’s side. Never can any sanctuary be found in their love.

When I write to my brother begging for asylum, he denies me, reminding me of my “willful and sensual” nature, whatever that means. It is probably some reference to my short-lived dream of marrying Ralph Neville. That I am willful is something that cannot be denied. But a woman with less will would have died long ago, either by Thomas’s hand or by her own. Of course Bess has considerably less will than I and survives quite well. I ask myself why I cannot be like this soft, round woman everyone adores. I ask myself why I cannot be docile and submissive. The answer is always the same: it is not I, and I will not be broken into being someone else simply because it would be more convenient for Thomas. I am not an actor in a masque. I am myself and will remain true to it.

But at such a cost!

Thomas does not care. When he asks if I would attend the Boleyn whore when the king creates her Marquess of Pembroke, I refuse. Let Mary do it. She has been seduced by the black-eyed witch and loves her with the same devotion I do my queen, even so far as to become a reformist. She considers carrying her train an honor.

The snub earns me a beating, of course. But not by my husband’s hand. It is as though it would expel too much of his own precious energy to dole out the necessary discipline, so he contents himself by watching the servants do it. They are more than happy to oblige.

His visits are fleeting, however, and when he is here, he closets himself in Bess’s apartments. And Bess, that doe-eyed girl whose sympathetic countenance coupled with her harlotry causes me to retch in anguish, is rendered impotent by fear and stupidity and the same lovesickness that has made us all helpless to Thomas at one time or another, though there is very little about the man to love. I believe, however, that when one is forced to endure another human being for life, one must seek something endearing in the other, else be driven mad. So that is what we have done. We have invented reasons to love this man, for whatever he is, in order to preserve our delicate hold on sanity. Whether it is true or not, knowing there is someone to love makes our pathetic lot easier.

It is a mixed blessing when in 1533 Bess leaves Kenninghall. I take joy in the fact that she will no longer be about to serve as a constant reminder of my husband’s treachery but misery that she has left to serve at the court of “Queen” Anne Boleyn, the whore who has torn the world apart for sinful lust of a married man. For this slut, King Henry has abandoned papal authority, named himself head of the Church of England, and invalidated his marriage with Catherine with the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury, thus enabling them to marry at last. Even before their “wedding,” her belly was swollen with the supposed prince Henry is so keen on getting, confirming every nasty thought I ever wasted on her. This is the woman to be held above all others; this travesty is to be our sovereign. This “Queen” Anne Boleyn.

As for the true queen, the one and only queen of Henry’s England, she languishes in her own hell, exiled to a northern castle, separated from her daughter and all those who love her. My heart yearns to comfort her and in her find comfort for myself.

But Bess is gone, so I shall take comfort in that. To resent her for usurping my rightful place at court is useless. I would not serve Anne Boleyn even if there were never any Bess and my husband were mad with love for me. Nothing can coax me there, not even the news that my daughter Mary will wed the king’s bastard, Henry Fitzroy. I cannot abide attending. This was just one more thing orchestrated by Anne Boleyn, and I will not sit there and watch it as though I am giving sanction to anything she does.

I sit out Mary’s wedding night sewing shirts for the poor. I pray for her, my Mary, a child as foreign to me as the New World. Regret leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Had things been different, I would have helped my daughter ready herself for her passage into womanhood. I would have given her counsel on what to expect, what to hope for, and what reality may serve instead. I would have brushed her golden hair and kissed her and praised her beauty in her wedding gown. It could have been as my Cathy’s wedding day, filled with promise and joy . . . No. Not Mary. Never her. She is not mine.

From the first day Thomas set eyes on her, she was his, whether out of guilt for the circumstances bringing her into this world, or out of something darker I have no need to explore. She is his, his and some other place, some fey country unattainable to me. The chasm that began at birth has only grown with time, and I fear I may never bridge it. What’s more, I fear I may not want to. I blink against the tears that obscure the garment I am stitching. There is nothing to be done. Nothing but to hope she can find some happiness in her marriage and that she will be freed from the influence of her father and that wicked court as soon as possible.

Bess Holland

It is very strange and exciting at this court, a court made so happy by its merry new queen, who presides over us displaying her pregnant belly with pride. Never in my wildest fantasies could I have ever conceived of waiting on a queen, let alone a queen who is Anne Boleyn, the same woman I served as a young girl.

I am not on close terms with her. She has changed. She is hardened, jaded, and the more I observe her, the less merry she appears. There is a frantic edge to her; the joy she radiates is fringed with desperation and I pity as much as admire her.

She has only spoken to me once, to tell me I was most lucky to have found favor with her, for she does not suffer wantons at her court. “It seems you have done well with your duke,” she added with a snicker. All I could do was bow.

She has made it clear that I am here because my lord wishes it and since Queen Anne owes much of her crown to his guidance, my presence is a debt paid. I am in the company of many Howards, Mary among them, but she has her own friends now, and despite the love we bear each other and the fact we are in the same place, we have grown in different directions. Mary belongs to an erudite circle. Queen Anne’s is a court who reads and writes poetry. I cannot read or write a word, not even my own name, and the duke said it was pointless to spend money engaging a tutor for me. So I am on the fringes of this world. But it is a world I never thought to be a part of to begin with, so I am happy with my lot. I dance and make merry. There are a lot of gentlemen here my age and they are fun to flirt with as long as the duke does not notice. After witnessing the treatment of the duchess, I am careful in all I do.

One of the events I hold most dear in the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign is the wedding of my beloved Mary Howard. It signifies so much for so many. For Queen Anne, it is establishing that Fitzroy is no longer a serious contender for the throne. For His Grace, it is the union of his child with that of a king—a most useful alliance. For Mary, it means a chance at happiness, God grant it. And for me, it means hope. Mary’s little face radiates it and I absorb its light, knowing if she can forge happiness in this tempest, so can I.

At her wedding feast she dances with her father-in-law, the mightiest man in the world, King Henry VIII, and her husband, whom she is obviously very fond of, the sweet Harry Fitzroy. She dances with her father, and I watch him reach up to touch her hair.

The duke’s eyes follow her all evening, enslaved by something I have never understood. It matters not where we are; when Mary is present, my lord has eyes only for her.

When I learn that he will not allow her and Fitzroy to live as man and wife, my gut churns in sympathy.

“Why won’t you let her go?” I entreat him. “She would be much happier with her own household to run and ladies to attend her. Why, I could attend her! I would love it! Far more so than here—here it is so lonely and no one bears any love for me—”

His Grace’s cheeks flush with a rage I thought to be reserved for anyone but me.

“Yours is an opinion not needed, Bess,” he tells me in his calm, even tone. “Best remember your place.”

I should never have challenged him. His word, after all, is always the last word. I bow my head, saddened less for Mary than I am over the thought that my opinion is not wanted, let alone needed, by the only man I am allowed to love.