Rivals in the Tudor Court. Darcey Bonnette

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ place the ring on her finger yourself?”

      I look at the princess through my lashes. My heart is racing. Truly I believe facing an army of Scots would be easier than making physical contact with this one maid.

      Lady Anne offers me a delicate hand. I cannot help but admire the daintiness of the long slim fingers as I slide the ring on.

      “You have perfect fingers for the virginals,” I find myself saying.

      I look up at her then. My nervousness recedes like the tide; calm surges through me as warm as wine. Everything about me fades, obscured by the light of her face, that sweet, beautiful face. I do not think that I am fourteen, with fickle fourteen-year-old passions. I think of her.

      And love her. Just like that.

      And just like that, with our hands joined here at Westminster among a bustling court before a jubilant king and his bride, I know she loves me, too.

      My father is pardoned and released in 1489, returning home a different man from the one who entered the Tower three years ago. He is harder, darker, proving with his short temper and ruthless management of his household that he is indeed his father’s son.

      He is styled the Earl of Surrey and allowed to keep the lands in his wife’s inheritance but none from his father’s or the Mowbrays’.

      He is certain to unleash his bitterness at being withheld the title he covets with as much longing as his predecessor, that of the Duke of Norfolk. I, for one, think he should be grateful to be alive, but I suppose he isn’t dwelling on that now. I imagine that he concludes since he is alive he should receive what he considers his due.

      The king tests his loyalty by sending him to Yorkshire to quell a rising there. Lord Surrey wins the day. As a reward, His Grace grants him the Howard lands he had still retained.

      All of this I take in with interest, being that my father’s elevation is equivalent to my own. However, there is more to interest the lads at court than advancement and soldiering. The fairer sex has entered our awareness. We watch them, these gentle daughters of Venus with their curves and long, lustrous hair, their soft voices, their perfume, their graceful, fluid movements as they dance … and are seized by fever. Suddenly, there are not enough whores to be visited, not enough maidens to deflower. I join in, always one to participate in sport of any kind. Besides, I am to be married soon. I must know what to do. And so I learn.

      No sooner do I become a student in the art of love than I become enslaved by it. The gangly girl I met when plighting my troth has returned to the court of her sister a beautiful woman, and my love for her is rejuvenated the moment our eyes lock. When not engaged in my duties I court her with all vigour. Together we stroll in the gardens. She plays for me upon the lute and the virginals, lifting her sweet voice in song, and I close my eyes, trying to emblazon in my mind and heart every note, every sound, every nuance that is this girl, this girl I have come to adore and love with every fibre of my soul. The strength of this emotion terrifies and excites me; like wine I drink it in but remain insatiable. All about me is the growing need for Lady Anne, my princess, my forever love.

      To impress her I try my hand at poetry and fail miserably. She laughs that soft laugh that resembles the gurgling of a stream—how the sound intoxicates me!—and strokes my cheek, assuring me I need not impress her with flowery words.

      “All I need,” she tells me, grasping my hands, “all I could ever want, is you, Lord Howard.”

      On 4 February 1495, I stand in Westminster Abbey; she has me. Hands entwined with my bride, my princess, we stand before the Archbishop of Canterbury and are wed.

      She is still taller than I, almost too tall for what is comely, but it is a trait I will excuse. I make up for my own lack of height in muscle and after we are led to our wedding chambers that night by giggling courtiers who see us to our bed with all manner of crude jokes befitting the occasion, the princess seems duly impressed.

      Our settlement is the most pathetic thing a bride and groom of our illustrious station have ever seen and I cannot contain a sigh of dismay when I learn that the princess and I will be living on nothing but the charity of our relatives. We are penniless and it is seen to that we will remain so until my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, passes on. With my luck the cantankerous old bird will live forever.

      The queen provides for her sister in the manner she sees fit, and my princess is given a household of two ladies, a maid, her own gentlemen and yeomen, along with three grooms. She is also given twenty shillings a week for food and a promise that the proper gowns will be provided.

      My father allows us use of his residences at Lambeth and Stoke in Suffolk and when I ask my princess where the best place to start our family would be, she blinks back tears.

      “Stoke, my lord,” she tells me in her soft, husky voice. “The country. Far away from court.”

      “Then we shall remove to Stoke,” I tell her, taking her dainty hands in mine. “And there I will be your goodly and devoted knight and will love you till I die.”

      This passionate display sends her into a deep flush and she bows her head. My God, she is a beauty! I cannot believe she is mine.

      I find I am relieved to depart from court as well. I am not a born courtier. I am as yet unskilled in the art of empty flattery. I know my calling and that is to arms; should the king need my service, he is assured that I am ready to prove my worth as his loyal and able defender.

      We set up our meagre household and I find it isn’t altogether bad to be poor (though I will seize every opportunity to reverse my fortune—I’m not an idiot, after all). My princess is quite competent and demonstrates a keen ability for frugality. She is formal; I imagine being raised at court has instilled this in her and as a result she is not given to initiating demonstrations of affection.

      She does not talk much; she is a dreamer. One could never accuse her of being silly or frivolous. Often I find her staring out of the window or seated in the gardens, her expression soft with melancholy whimsy.

      “What are you thinking about?” I ask her one day when I find her seated beside the duck pond. She holds an old loaf of bread but is not breaking any off to feed the ducks that are gathered about in anticipation.

      To my surprise, tears light her eyes. She averts her head.

      “Princess?” I call her nothing else; to utter her sacred name would be sacrilege. So she is Princess, my forever princess, and her tears twist my gut with pain. There is nothing I long for more than to bring her comfort. I kneel beside her, taking her chin between my fingers, turning her head toward me. “What is it, my love?”

      She blinks rapidly. “I cannot help it, my lord,” she tells me in tones that ring with desperation. “I cannot stop thinking of them. I try to will away the thoughts … I pray to the Lord for guidance, that He will help me banish them from my mind—”

      “Who, my lady?”

      She buries her face in her pretty hands. “My brothers … the princes … the princes in the Tower.”

      “Oh, Princess!” I cry, gathering her in my arms, rocking back and forth. What can I say to this? Never once had I thought of how the event affected her. Truly she must have had to disguise her grief well at the courts of her uncle Richard III and now her brother-in-law Henry VII.

      “I suppose we’ll never know what СКАЧАТЬ