Although Mabel was petite, lively, and, compared to me, looked delicate, she loved nothing more than to take brisk walks with me along the Thames (once my leg was “healed”), hallooing at passing crafts and picking late wildflowers.
When—if—I wed Anthony, I would think of Mabel not as a stepdaughter but as a younger sister, and I knew she would get on famously with Margaret when she came to live with me, and with Cecily if she visited too.
Ignoring her father’s warning for silence, Mabel whispered to me, “Cat Howard is like a cat indeed, sleek and preening, almost purring.”
Everyone hushed as the king seated the queen. Then, legs apart like a behemoth bestriding the world, leaning on his carved, bejeweled cane, Henry Tudor turned to address his assembled courtiers. This was not a normal Sabbath service but a hastily assembled thanksgiving gathering on a Sunday evening. Four-year-old Prince Edward, living with his household in the countryside, had just recovered from a bout of quatrain fever so severe that the king had panicked he might not survive.
I slanted a glance at Mary Tudor’s profile. Would the king let a woman rule if he lost his heir? Rumors said that, since his young queen was not yet with child after an eighteen-month marriage, he might reinstate Mary and Elizabeth in the line of succession.
But it turned out that the king also meant to give public thanks for something else too. I recall almost precisely what he said that day, for the irony of it struck me so hard I did not know whether to cry silently or scream aloud. I pictured myself standing in the rapt congregation and naysaying what he claimed about the queen—with proof of what I had seen—but I sat like the rest of them, staring at the massive man before us who commanded all our fates.
“Lord High God,” he began. I bowed my head with the rest, but peeked at my enemy through slitted eyelids. He stood, not with bowed head, but gazing upward toward the ornate blue ceiling with its golden stars and gilt angels. “We are grateful for the salvation of our dear Prince of Wales, Edward Tudor, beloved by all. And for safe journey on our progress to the north of our realm to calm the once ruffled waters there. And I render thanks to Thee, O Lord, that after so many strange accidents that have befallen my marriages, Thou hast been pleased to give me a wife so entirely conformed to my inclinations as her I now have.”
I closed my eyes tight and bit my lower lip hard. He did deserve this wife, but not for the reasons he believed. The murderer of the Fitzgerald men was also a bedswerver with a gargantuan appetite for women and wives, and he had met his match in Cat Howard. Justice for his own adulteries, at least, if not for his persecution of the Geraldines.
I was not only partly appeased but also astounded he did not yet know of his queen’s betrayal. Had no one yet discovered it, or had he not been told? Edward Clinton had been so sure the queen would be found out. What a spider’s web, one that I yet longed to tear apart. I told myself that if it didn’t come out soon, I would somehow send a note to the Privy Council. It would have to be anonymous, since the day Edward and I parted at the royal dockyard in London, I had made several promises to him.
I pictured that scene again as Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the king’s chief cleric and close confidant, began his sermon. In my mind’s eye I sat not here, but stood clasping Edward Clinton’s hands in farewell at the top of the gangplank of the
Defiance
a fortnight ago. Then, I was trying to ignore Alice’s hovering rather than the closeness of Anthony Browne as he now reached over onto my lap to hold my hand.
“I have missed you, Gera,” Anthony murmured, but I heard other words, another voice.
“I shall miss you, Irish,” Edward had said that day on the deck of his ship.
“I could almost say the same, English.”
We shared a quick smile. “Gera,” he plunged on, turning his back to Alice and speaking quickly, “you promised me the night you tried to steal my papers from the king that you would tell me all the truth next time we met. This isn’t really the next time, but I want your promise you will not be the one to betray the queen, whatever her sins.”
“I do promise that—as long as it comes out another way, and soon.”
“It will. You must learn patience.”
“I have been forced to learn that and so much more.”
“And about Sir Anthony. A union with him would be a protection to you, the best that you could have, except to wed some country lord who could keep you under lock and key in his castle.”
It was a tease, of course, yet he looked most serious. No other privy moments so intense had passed between us beyond that precious day we visited his new manor house and I had wished that he were building it for me. Without putting it into words or actions, we had somehow acknowledged our mutual passion that day, then kept it at bay thereafter. Though I hated to admit it, I had come to see that Edward, however loyal to his damned mentor, Dudley, and his horrible king, was a man of honor.
“You believe I need protection?” I had asked him. “Have you heard something else of late that may endanger me or mine?”
“Only that I have seen your strong backbone and manly courage.”
“Manly courage?”
“Ay. I know the heir to the Fitzgerald earldom is in hiding, but you have the heart and stomach for the fight—perhaps with words and not weapons—that you have vowed to make for the Geraldines someday.”
I was awestruck at first. This man understood me. He saw the fallen battle banner I must resurrect. “But my brother Gerald has the dedication and courage too!” I protested, before I realized Edward might be leading up to inquiring whether I knew where Gerald was. Had all of this rescuing of me been too smooth? Had he—Ursula too—befriended me to learn Gerald’s location and plans? No, no, I could not help but believe the best of him.
He held up a hand to halt the rest of my protest. “Back to my point. I worry that if you wed Sir Anthony, it could be your shield and buckler but your downfall too. Once you are that close to His Majesty through one of his most trusted, intimate friends, you must not think you can get away with something rash or dangerous, even if you ferret out some weakness of the king you can exploit through your connections or your allure. Promise me you will not take risks that way.”
“You mean, once I am in his inner circle, try to seduce the king—at least to trust me—so I can bring him down?”
Edward’s grip on my hands tightened. “When the queen falls, he will be furious, then crushed. Despite his age and failing health, he will be looking quickly elsewhere for a wife or a mistress to assuage his grief. He’s taken mistresses before from among his friends’ wives, clear back to Mary Boleyn when she was wed to his friend Will Carey. I loyally serve my king and country, but I know what it is to be a royal ward with a father dead and be dependent on those in power. I know what it is to yearn for place and position, and for someone to truly trust and love—”
“He certainly loves her, and she’s so pretty!” Mabel whispered, knocking me out of my daydream as she elbowed me. She sighed so heartily that Anthony leaned into me, over me, and rapped his daughter on her knee with another, “Hush!”
At least all that covered my own sigh, one of exasperation that the so-called King of Ireland could be such a dolt, standing on the precipice of shame and grief he did not see coming. And I sighed inwardly, shamed and grieved by my fierce longing for the man I missed and would never have.
But soon the storm clouds at court gathered, full to bursting. The king, they said, had suddenly gone hunting. The queen, informed of that, was surprised and kept to her chambers, most annoyed. The royal party—Anthony Browne was one who supposedly went hunting with him—was gone nigh on three days. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, came to visit the queen and tried to lure her from her foot-stomping frets with chatter, compliments, and sweet sonnets, but to no avail. As he left her suite of rooms, he snagged me and pulled me aside, looking in quite a foul mood himself.
“Something’s afoot,” he muttered. “I know your hoary-headed suitor rode out with the king, but do you know where they went or what’s going on?”
“I believe each time you have come to court since I have lived here, you are the one who knew the inner workings of it all. Are you surprised you could not cheer your royal cousin, then?”
“They must have had a spat, but she can’t recall over what, the silly chit. And after such a triumph on the great northern progress. Strange, for I heard His Majesty made a pretty speech before the court and God himself—the heavenly God, not the earthly one we must put up with—”
“Surrey,” I interrupted, “the walls have ears here. You’d best watch your mouth.”
“I’d rather watch yours—”
“Because there’s been talk you have been overbearing about your Howard family claims to the throne if the Prince of Wales would have died—”
“Ha! The rebel Fitzgerald pot calling the rebel Surrey kettle black. I only—Now what in heaven’s name are those guards here for?” he muttered as eight yeomen marched down the long gallery past us with their halberds held at the ready.
I spotted Mabel and saw her father had returned from the long hunt with the king to parts unknown. I excused myself from the distraught Surrey and hurried toward them.
“Ah, my dear,” Anthony greeted me, with a quick kiss on my mouth.
“Is the king back?” I asked. “But why the show of his yeomen guards?”
“Disaster has struck His Majesty—and the queen,” he told us, pulling both Mabel and me back into a windowed alcove. “The queen is going to be arrested for the worst of crimes to her royal lord, for we have solid evidence she’s been unfaithful to him.”
“No!” Mabel cried in disbelief, wide-eyed as she clapped both hands over her mouth.
Afraid to show my expression—a mingling of relief and sadness yet joy that the king would suffer—I put both hands over my face as if I would cry.
“Gera, Gera,” Anthony crooned, and pulled me close with one arm, Mabel with the other. I saw he had not even removed his riding cape, which was covered with road dust and made me want to sneeze. “Now listen, my dears. All the evidence against the queen for her licentious past—even as a young maid reared by her Howard grandmother—has been laid out before the king through an anonymous note sent to the council.”
I started at that: It was as if I had wished it done. Evidently thinking I was just shocked at his news, he plunged on. “Even since she’s been wed, she has been unfaithful to her lord with at least two men, her privy secretary, Dereham, and the king’s own favored Thomas Culpeper. I cannot bear to relay to you maidens the rest of it. I am to conduct more of the investigation and help bring the charges.”
“He will put her away?” Mabel asked.
“Permanently. We talk treason here, for, adultery aside, she could have got herself with child, and the king could be led to believe it was his own. He was seduced by her youth and beauty, the vile, plotting little whore.”
The vile, seducing, plotting, unfaithful whore—that was what they had said of Anne Boleyn. I pulled away from Anthony’s embrace as the huge impact of what had happened assailed me. My desire to see the king suffer—it came with a huge price for a young woman, however foolish, and the young men who must have loved her. In my mind’s eye, I saw Thomas Culpeper return to Cat Howard for yet another quick kiss and recalled how he twirled her so happily in his arms. . . .
“Gera, I believe we should find you a chair,” Anthony said. “You look ashen, my dearest.”
“No need,” I assured him. “Just the shock, the shame of it all.”
“I am sending both of you away from court on the morrow to Mary Tudor’s household for a while—with His Majesty’s permission,” he told us. “Gera, I know you have served the queen, but I am one of four men the king has entrusted with the examinations of the queen’s ladies, and since you left the northern progress early and could know naught of all this, I am taking you out of this hornets’ nest.”
Hornets’ nest, yes, that was what it was. But so easily accomplished to escape all this?
In a quick, quiet voice, Anthony went on. “The queen and her accomplice Rochford are to be sent to Syon House on the Thames eight miles from London, where they will be kept close confined and questioned, then mayhap to the Tower.”
“The Tower . . .” I said, feeling sicker by the minute. Of course, that would be anyone’s fate—even a young woman’s—for crossing this king. My father languishing there, my uncles taken from there to their terrible deaths . . .
When shrieks shredded the air, I almost thought they could be mine.
We heard men’s voices down the way near the entrance to the queen’s rooms, then a woman’s strident tones, arguing, cursing, wailing.
“The king’s praying in the Chapel Royal,” Anthony told us. “Go to your rooms, both of you, and keep your heads down until I fetch you early on the morrow.” He pushed us in the direction we should go and vaulted away, shoving courtiers back to reach the ruckus.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder—though I think Mabel was too short to see it all over the heads of others—we watched as Catherine Howard, queen of England, ran screaming from her presence chamber and careened down the long gallery toward the Chapel Royal, where the king had publicly blessed their union but three days ago. Her frenzied words were hard to discern amidst her cries of terror as Anthony and several of the king’s guards ran after her.