His Grace does not come to see our girl, though he is made aware of her existence. I am allowed to tarry for a month, a blissful month of nursing and caring for my little lamb. I take pleasure in everything, every midnight feeding, every bath, every smile and gurgle. Every tear is kissed away. How creamy and smooth is her baby skin! How tiny are her hands and feet! I count her fingers, kissing each one; I kiss the soles of her silky baby feet. I sleep with her on my chest; she does not leave my side. For this one month she is mine, all mine, and I do not relinquish her for one moment.
“I am Bess Holland,” I tell her, propping her up on my knees in bed and staring her hard in her earnest little face. She regards me with somber black eyes as though she is an active participant in the conversation. “I am Bess Holland and I am your mother. Always remember it, Jane. Always remember that I am your mother who loves you, and the great duke of Norfolk is your father.”
Over and over I tell her this, hoping against hope that it ingrains itself in her young head. I tell her this until at last the great duke of Norfolk orders me home.
I kiss my babe and hold her close, sobbing great quaking sobs until at last I turn her over to Jenny.
“Take care of her,” I urge the young woman, who only two months before was delivered of a lusty son. “Take care of my daughter. She is my heart.”
“Oh, my lady!” cries Jenny with tears in her blue eyes.
I nod. “My treasure,” I say again. “For where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.”
Jenny embraces me, the babe snug between our breasts, these breasts that will give her life and preserve my greatest love.
My treasure . . .
When I return home to His Grace, I sob violent tears against his chest. My breasts have dried yet they still ache for my child. I long for her warm weight in my arms, for her cry, for her smile.
“Better to lose her like this,” His Grace tells me one night. He is leaving shortly for France to go to war and though a part of me will always love him, I cannot help nursing the hope . . . oh, God, it is a terrible hope. “Better to lose her like this,” he says again, stroking my hair, “than to lose her as I lost mine. You distance yourself, Bess. It is better that way. Then when something happens, you can bear it. It's the only way to bear it. Bess.” His voice catches. “Bess, I can't watch you become what I have become. I can't risk it.”
I pull away, staring His Grace in the face. He is utterly broken. His onyx eyes are liquid with tears. I reach up and caress his cheek. He has warned me before that this is why he keeps Jane and me apart, in an effort to spare me any future pain. He is so afraid of the heartbreak her loss would cause both of us that he cannot suffer her presence. Neither can he let me go. In a strange way this renews my love for him.
“I understand,” I tell him. And I do. I do not accept the situation any better. But I understand. I take his hands, squeezing them. “Oh, my lord, I have loved you since I was a child. All of my innocence has been given to youâeverything I am has been given to you and now it seems I give you my suffering as well.”
It is a suffering I shall bear. I look into his tearstained face. It is an old face. And as much compassion as I feel for this countenance, I know that it is mortal and I have but to wait. My suffering will end soon. My patience will be rewarded.
As I take His Grace in my arms, I think of his impending journey to France and of all the time it will allow me to spend with my daughter, my sweet little Jane.
Thomas Howard
Bess can think me as cruel as she pleases, but I did it for her. I did it for us. She will understand someday. She always understands. And even if the child were acknowledged, it would be raised much the same way.
Meantime I am on the king's business, but before I make war on France in His Majesty's illustrious name, I remove to Norfolk House to see the child. Perhaps I am getting soft in my dotage, but for some reason I cannot abide the thought of dying in the field without seeing my tenth child, this little bairn Bess and I created together.
Ah, but she is pretty, with skin like alabaster and hair as black as pitch. The keen eyes that stare back at me are black as onyxâmy eyes, Anne Boleyn's eyes. I shudder a moment as I take her in my arms. I smile. She has the Howard nose, poor lass! But she has Bess's little bow of a mouth and tiny ears.
I will see that she is looked after. I will make certain to honor my promise to Bess. She will have a happy life and make a good marriage. She will be taught all things courtly and be a great lady. And I will set aside some things for her. Things to remind her of who she is. Though not my legitimate daughter, she is a Howard nonetheless and will someday be proud of the fact.
I hold her close, kissing the downy hair. Perhaps I was wrong to keep her from Bess. I will see how long the child lives; if she lives past five, I will allow Bess active participation in her life as her mother. There is a better chance of survival after that age. Meantime we must wait. We must not get too attached.
Yet that night I unlace my shirt and hold her against my bare chest, feeling her little heart beat against mine. I fall asleep with her in my arms.
So much can happen in five years.
Fall from Grace
Thomas Howard, The Tower of London, 19 January 1547
I
t has all come to nothing. The plots and the plans, all ended, all over. The king's last pathetic campaign to recapture lost holdings in France was a miserable failure. The reformist queen Catherine Parr still sits the throne despite all efforts to oust her.
My daughter, my beautiful Mary, was given a chance to sit under the canopy of state, but her histrionics in the face of that suggestion were enough to thwart the whole stratagem. It is a night forever emblazoned on my mind, the night Mary refused to be queen. How she carried on, vowing to slit her own throat rather than take part in the villainy of my plot. Then somewhere between the screaming and the struggling, in the midst of our shared insanity I glimpsed her again, shining out of the eyes of my daughter, my princess. In that moment I knew it did not matter that Mary would not become queen, that my dreams had all come to naught. In that moment everything was forgotten between us, all the hate and the confusion. There were no words. For once we did not need words. It was all there, communicated in one pained gaze and betrayed by a parting kiss. For that instant our souls fled their confining bodies, rising and curling and merging like smoke from the flames of our agonizing connection, unable to be viewed as separate beings. But they returned, imprisoned once more. The moment was gone. And then she was gone, back to Kenninghall, back to life, and I was alone just as I have always been alone.
Yet I am consoled. Mary made the right choice; her wild demonstrations saved her from the king. And from me.
I pressed onâI am a Howard; isn't that what Howards do? I schemed and connived because that is what I was bred for. I conspired against the queen. I would have the Protestant bitch brought down, but even convincing charges of heresy against her were dropped in the end. She has a hold on Henry VIII, does this Catherine.
And so I decided if I am failed I'd best join the powers that be. I planned a triple alliance. Two of my son Lord Surrey's daughters were to marry two sons of the prince's uncle Edward Seymour, Lord Hertfords. My Mary was to wed the rakish Tom Seymour. Though she had once refused him, she was eager for the union now. She wanted it, I think. And it would have been a comfort to me to see her married at last. She could have the children she had longed for her entire life . . . but in the end her hotheaded brother confronted her in the Long Gallery at court. He'd have none of his family mixed with the upstart Seymour clan, he cried, and suggested she become the king's mistress should she yearn for such power. No brain in his head, that stupid boy! How could I have sired such an idiot! He made fools of us all and no matches were made nor will ever be made. It is done, all done.
Surrey, my brilliant poet-soldier, my beautiful boy, proved to be the ruin of us all. For all the time I was plotting, he was plotting, and all for the good of the Howards, or so he thought. But Surrey was never as clever as I. Not even close. He was all whimsy, all heartâa bloody romantic fool. I will never be able to comprehend it. Why he quartered his arms with that of Edward the Confessor, a right that is reserved only for kings, why he would risk thinking about kidnapping the little prince, why he would boast so openly about what the Howards would do once we had control of him. . . . If any of those things had even been possible before, they are not now. For my part, a part I did not even play, I am arrested and stripped of all my titles. How thrilled were my peers when they took away my staffs of office and Garter chain! When I declared my allegiance and faithfulness to the king from the barge on the way to the Tower, their lips twitched in suppressed laughter. They did not believe me, I who always served the king before anyone and anything, before my own family! God, and for what? For a cold, damp cell in the Tower.
I have failed. I have failed my father, I have failed my children, I have failed myself. Now, like he once was, I am a prisoner along with my son, who would have succeeded me as fourth duke of Norfolk but who is now condemned to die.
Surrey is to die today and all for being impulsive and foolish. Surrey is to die and I am betrayed. Elizabeth was happy to testify against me, of that there was never a doubt, and for her part I can hardly blame her. But Bess . . . my Bess . . . What did I ever do to her but give her everything she could have wanted? Yes, I took the baby. But I was protecting her! Why couldn't she see that? She said she understood! She never complained or protested, not in three years! She visited the child as much as she wanted; it could not have been a better arrangement, and after while I planned to restore her the child. But she nursed her pain and her hatred, nursed it like the babe I denied her till it grew into a force greater than all of us. How long must she have been waiting for this moment! When asked to recall any statements I may have made against king and country, she remembered. Ah, what clarity of mind did my Bess possess when she relayed my treasonous prediction of the king's impending death! Yes, that and every other offensive statement I ever could have uttered in confidence. And so she betrayed me, betrayed me for a child who is likely to die anyway and leave her with a heartbreak more agonizing than anything I could ever inflict. She will learn that for herself; my protection is no longer hers even if I wanted it to be.
And then there was my Mary . . . foolish little Mary who never knew from one minute to the next what to do. She implicated her brother and tried to save me by pleading my ignorance of his plots. True enough. I was ignorant of his schemes, but if it means saving my life, I will confess to knowing everything. I'll do anything to survive.
Surrey will not. Surrey, who even dared an unsuccessful escape from the Tower, will not survive. He will die for his unswerving pride.
By the window I watch. Below me my son stands in front of the throng, who jeers him and taunts him; Mary is there with his wife, Frances de Vere. The latter's head is buried in my daughter's delicate shoulder.
Surrey kneels before the block . . . oh, God . . . he spreads his arms like angel wings, commending his soul to the Lord. He is just a boy, a foolish twenty-nine-year-old boy-child. I think back to my twenty-ninth yearâwhat did I really know then? Surrey places his head on the block. . . . Five children he is leaving behind, three girls and two boys, two beautiful boys with curly hair. . . . Tears stream down my face as I curl my hands about the painfully freezing grid of bars that are my window. A flash of memory recalls to mind him playing in the gardens with Mary as children. He is placing a garland upon her golden head. . . .
The axe cuts through the air with mortal precision.
I watch my son, my son who once was the baby I held in my arms; I watch his head tumble into the straw. I watch the endless stream of blood flow from the twitching torso, red as the ruby necklace he coveted in Mary's childhood nightmare, a nightmare that foretold our family's doom with brutal accuracy.
Thunderous cannon announces the death of Surrey to the bedridden king. My body convulses with sobs. Elizabeth . . . What must Elizabeth be thinking right now? Thank God she is not here. Thank God she has removed to Kenninghall and cannot see this terrible thing!
And Mary, what is my Mary doing? She stands erect, staring at her brother's lifeless form. She is holding his sobbing wife. She does not cry; she does nothing.
Oh, God, let the girl cry . . . please let her cry!
She does not. She turns Frances away from the gruesome scene and together they quit the green.
The crowd disperses and the ravens surround my boy. . . .
The room is spinning. Bile is rising in my throat.
So this is where it has all led me.
I cannot stand. I sink onto the bed and lie back before my consciousness is stolen from me along with everything else.
How did I get it all so wrong?
Cannon. Bells. What is happening? I go to the window. Another execution? Footfalls in the hall. My guard bursts in.
“The king is deadâon 28 January, His Majesty passed! Long live King Edward VI!” cries Lieutenant of the Tower Sir John Markham.
I fall to my knees, stretching my arms toward Heaven. “Long live the king!” I cry in turn. I scramble to my feet at once. “Is there any news on my attainder?”
“You remain attainted and thus imprisoned,” says Markham, but he is smiling. “But you are no longer to be executed. His Majesty did not sign your death warrant. It appears he would not.”
“Then he did love me! In the face of everythingâ” I cut myself short; this is not a discussion for Markham. “So the Seymours will not release me. Ha! I'm that much of a threat, am I?” I laugh. “I imagine Lord Hertford, the boy king's uncle, is regent?”
“Yes,” says Markham. “He has been created lord protector of England and is now the Duke of Somerset.”
“God,” I say with a smirk. “Well. Fortunes shift all the time, it seems, and mine will, too. In time.”
Markham regards me, his expression a mingling of surprise and pity. I turn away from him.
“Thank you, Sir John, for informing me,” I tell him as I wave him away, taking comfort in what little power I still retain. “You are dismissed.”
With a slight laugh that raises the hairs on my neck, Markham quits the cell.
I sit on the bed and think about the late King Henry, Henry my nephew, Henry my friend. Henry my enemy. Everything I did was to keep his favor; indeed, I would have risked the flames of Hell for him. Had he been a little stronger, would he have had me released?
I'd like to think so.
Bess Holland, Mendham, Suffolk
How strange it should end this way. Just when I believed there was no hope for the duke, he is spared. I am glad. Though I testified against him, my conscience could not have borne his death. Now he resides in the Tower and I am freed from his suffocating love at last.
And yet I am sad. Sad for never saying good-bye, sad for the twenty years given to him that I can never get back, sad for loving him despite everything he was. Sad because he knows my evidence is what sealed his fate. Sad because of the daughter I am denied.
Joy permeates despair, however, and hope prevails over sorrow.
I am to be married. Me, Bessie Holland, Norfolk's whore, is to be married! Someone wants me, someone will still take me!
My brother hastily arranged the match. This summer I shall wed Henry Reppes, an East Anglian justice of the peace. Because of my cooperation in testifying against the duke, I have been granted my lands at Mendham, Suffolk, and all of my jewels have been returned to me, so I will come into this marriage as a
femme sole
. An independent woman of means.
Henry is a fine man close to my age. He is endearingly shy and when he presented me with a dainty gold band to plight our troth, his thick hands trembled. He is a big man, tall and strong with long, well-turned legs. I would not think him to be a JP but rather a hard-working farmer. His blue eyes reflect nothing but kindness, his smile is easy and sweet, and his speech is soft.
There is not a man on this earth more opposite of the duke of Norfolk than this Henry Reppes, and the fact makes me want to skip with joy.
“I hope you are happy with me, Miss Holland,” he tells me the night he plights his troth. “I cannot give you much; I am not a wealthy man. But you will always have what you need.” He offers a gentle smile. “And you will always have my respect and devotion.”
Oh, such fair words! Can I believe them? Has His Grace ever spoken such sweetness? Yes. But it always seemed empty, as though it was just to placate me. I must stop thinking of him. . . .
I am still not quite over the fact that Henry addressed me as Miss Holland. No longer am I called the inaccurate and humiliating Mrs. I am a miss and for once am not ashamed.
“I am most pleased with the match,” I tell him, reaching out to squeeze his large hand. “And I will be a loving and faithful wife to you.”
His lip quivers. Tears light his blue eyes; they shine brilliant topaz. He leans across the table and takes me in his arms, placing the gentlest of kisses on my mouth. I wrap my arms about his neck, shocked to feel so much affection for a virtual stranger.
We remain locked in that embrace for a long time and I begin to plan for the future I never thought I'd have. We will have a family, Henry and I. And after the wedding I will tell him about Jane, and he will help me retrieve her from Norfolk House.
It seems God in His mercy is giving me a second chance at first love.
Thomas Howard
After a month of imprisonment, I am allowed a visitor. That it should be my Mary seems most appropriate, though our reunion is far from joyous. Surrey's death envelops us in grief; there is no escaping it. How much have I to say to this girl! But the words stick in my throat. They are fool's words anyway, sentiments that would change nothing after all we have endured. There is no point.
So Mary leaves, taking with her all the beauty and light I am permitted to see. It is after her visit that the full impact of my imprisonment hits me like a lance to the chest. I ache all the time. I lie in my bed. I pace the small room on restless legs. Screams from the tortured assault me and I am reminded of past residents of this Tower. They visit me every night, taking turns keeping vigil by my bedside. My nieces Anne and Kitty stand there. Anne's black eyes reflect a mingling of accusation and amusement at my plight. Kitty's blue eyes reflect nothing but her bewildered sense of betrayal. My father stands there sometimes, shaking his head in grave disappointment. My brother Thomas, who wasted away here for the crime of loving the king's niece Margaret Douglas, also appears now and then. His young face registers a sustained anger that chills me to the core.