The Taming of the Queen Read online

  This is a wild young man, a fool who boasted that he could hold Boulogne forever, who has displeased the king with his rowdy grandeur more than once, but always played his way back into favour. He was the best friend of Henry Fitzroy, the king’s bastard son, and has always before been able to draw on that brotherly tragic love to win royal forgiveness.

  Although everyone is quick to say that it is no surprise that the duke’s heir is missing from his father’s table, that the Howards are always storming off, everyone knows the young man would not disappear into the stews of London without his retinue and friends. Henry Howard is far too pleased with himself to go anywhere without a full entourage to admire him: somebody must know where he is.

  One man knows: Lord Thomas Wriothesley. Slowly, it emerges that his men were seen bundling the young earl into a boat on the river late at night. Apparently there were a dozen of them in the Wriothesley livery and they had the young man between them, carrying him as he struggled and cursed them, and then they slung him in the bottom of the barge and sat on him. The boat went swiftly downstream into the darkness, and then it seemed to simply disappear. It was not an arrest, there was no warrant, and they did not arrive at the Tower. If it was a kidnap then Wriothesley has somehow found the mad courage to attack a son of the House of Norfolk, and to do it in the precincts of a royal palace. Nobody knows how he could do this, on what authority, nor on what quiet stretch of the dark river the barge with its honoured cargo can be moored, nor where the heir of the Howards is tonight.

  It is inconceivable that Wriothesley could wage a private vendetta against the young man. Wriothesley and the Howards were conspiring against me only a few weeks ago and Wriothesley was ready to take me in the royal barge down the river where he has now disappeared with the young Howard heir. So perhaps he was authorised by the king to take the young man. But nobody can think what Henry Howard can have done to invite such an attack, and Wriothesley is absent, and his servants are saying nothing.

  His father swears that Henry is innocent of anything. It is his brother, Tom, who was accused of reading heretical books and attending the sermons in my rooms, and besides, that is now allowed. Henry Howard, the older boy, is mostly interested in his own self-importance and his own pleasures. He is too busy with sport and jousting, poetry and whoring to seriously reflect. He will never have engaged in difficult study. Nobody can imagine him as a heretic, people begin to think that Wriothesley has overreached himself.

  Norfolk, after a few days’ silence, thinks he is strong enough to challenge the Lord Chancellor. He demands to know where his son is kept, what are the charges, and that he be released at once. He shouts at the Privy Council meeting, he says he must see the king. He even demands an audience with me. Everyone at court understands that nobody, not even the Lord Chancellor, can trouble a Howard without questions being asked. Norfolk rages in the meeting, cursing Wriothesley to his face, and the councillors watch these two powers, the old aristocrat and the new administrator, collide.

  As if in a terrible silent reply, without a public command from the king, and without warning, the yeomen of the guard march Henry Howard through the streets of London from Lord Wriothesley’s London house to the Tower on foot, like a common criminal. The great gates open as if they are expecting him, the constable of the Tower orders him to be taken to a cell. The doors close on him.

  At the Privy Council meeting the duke is foaming at the mouth. Still there is no word of accusation, no charge against his son. This is the work of his enemies, he swears to them; this is an attack by craven men, men of no family or position, men like Wriothesley, who have wriggled their way up into power by a show of learning and cleverness with the law, while old aristocrats, noblemen like the duke himself and his son, the flower of chivalry, are embarrassed by these new councillors.

  They don’t even hear him out. They don’t even answer his bellowed demands. The yeomen of the guard march into the Privy Council chamber and strip the sash of the Order of the Garter from his shoulders. They take his staff of office and break it before him as if he were a dead man and they were going to throw the pieces on top of the coffin as it rests in the grave, while Norfolk swears at them for fools, and reminds them of his nearly fifty years of service for the Tudors – hard service and dirty work that no-one else would do. They manhandle him from the room as he bellows his superiority, his innocence, his threats. Everyone can hear the scrape of his boots on the floor and the yell of his protest, all the way down the long gallery.

  The door to the king’s privy chamber is open a crack; nobody knows if the king has heard. Nobody knows if this is by royal command or if Wriothesley is staging a coup against his rivals. So nobody knows what to do.

  Now, two Howards – the Duke of Norfolk and his heir, the earl – are held in the Tower without charge, without accusation, without reason given. The unthinkable has happened to them: the Howards, father and son, who have brought so many innocent people to the scaffold, who have sat high on their horses and watched innocent men hang, are imprisoned themselves.

  The news of the fall of their rivals brings Thomas Seymour back to court in a hurry to consult with his brother, and Anne Seymour hovers in the doorway of the Seymour rooms to listen and then reports back to me.

  ‘Apparently the Howard house Kenninghall was searched from top to bottom on the very day that the duke was arrested. They went in at the very moment that he was taken to the Tower. My husband’s clerk says that the charge is to be treason.’

  Joan Denny, whose husband, Sir Anthony, is in the king’s confidence, agrees. ‘The Duke of Norfolk’s mistress has signed a paper saying that the duke said that His Majesty was very sick.’ She lowers her voice. ‘She will say on oath that he said that the king couldn’t last long.’

  There is a shocked silence: not that the duke should say what everyone knows, but that his mistress should betray him to the Lord Chancellor’s men.

  Anne nods, avid at this disaster falling on her rivals. ‘They were planning to alter the royal will, seize the prince and take the throne.’ I look at her incredulously. ‘No, that’s impossible. Take the throne? The Norfolks are creatures of the throne. They have spent their lives jumping like fleas in any direction that any king might take. They never hesitate to obey him, whatever he asks. Their own daughters . . .’ I break off but we all know that Mary Boleyn, her sister, Anne, her cousin Madge Shelton, their cousin Katherine Howard, were all Howard girls paraded before the king by their family and given to him as wives or whores.

  Anne Seymour bristles at the mention of the Howard young women. Her own lamented sister-in-law Jane Seymour took a swift and dishonourable path from lady-in-waiting to queen. ‘Well, at least Mary Howard refused.’

  ‘Refused what?’

  ‘To be dishonoured. With her own father-in-law!’

  I don’t follow her. ‘Anne, be clear with me. Who wanted Mary Howard dishonoured? And what do you mean by her father-in-law? You don’t mean the king?’

  She draws closer to me, her face bright with scandalised excitement. ‘You know that they proposed to marry Mary Howard to my brother-in-law, our Thomas?’

  ‘Yes,’I say steadily. ‘Everyone knows that the king gave his assent.’

  ‘But they had no intention of an honourable match. Never! They were planning to marry him and cuckold him. What d’you think of that?’

  The thought of someone planning unhappiness for Thomas is like a physical blow. I know what shame is. I would never want Thomas to feel it. ‘I don’t think much of it at all. But what did they mean to do?’

  ‘They were going to marry him, and make him ask you if she could be one of your ladies-in-waiting. He was to bring her to court. And what do you think she was to do then?’

  Slowly, a plot is unfolding. I think: how vile these people are, these sneakbills. ‘I would have granted her a place with me, of course. A Howard girl, a Seymour wife could not have been refused.’ And, I think, I would have done anything to bring Thomas to court so