that steady, certain upward motion that is the dagger’s deadliest move.
I’ll not let anyone get the best of me.
Of course they do try. I’d be a fool to think they would not. I am small and an easy target, but I meet them as a snarling badger would an unsuspecting rabbit and soon my reputation as a fierce and uncompromising opponent precedes me. There is no longer a doubt in my mind that I can be a competent and able soldier, that in hand-to-hand combat I can run a man through without faltering. It is a matter of us or them, after all.
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” asks Neddy one day.
I laugh. “And what is there to fear? God’s body, Neddy, I’ve no time for that nonsense.” I shrug. “Fear stops you from everything. I’ve never heard of a coward rising to power. They remain a nobody.”
“But we’re nobodies,” says my little brother.
I seize his arm. “No, we’re not. We are the Howards. Our family’s known success before and we will know it again!”
“You sound like Grandfather.” Neddy laughs.
I release his arm, stepping back, the fear I so condemn surging through me.
I do not want to sound like Grandfather.
I first see Anne Plantagenet at the king’s wedding to her sister Elizabeth on 18 January 1486. We are to formally plight our troth this day and I have a little ring for her that was given to me by my father, who still passes his miserable existence in the Tower.
The ring bears no coat of arms, but I was able to scrape enough together to have an H and P interwoven in it to remind her that this is a union of the houses of Howard and Plantagenet.
I steal glimpses of her throughout the grand ceremony that is held at Westminster. She is looking at her sister and new brother-in-law, however, and does not glance at me once.
“She’s beautiful, Tom,” says Neddy in dreamy tones.
I flush and look away, casting my eyes to the ring I am wearing on my middle finger. I hope it fits her. I hope she doesn’t laugh at me and think it a cheap token. Were I in a better financial situation, I would have a beautiful signet ring designed, but such is not my present fate. She will have to settle for this.
At the wedding feast, we are presented to one another for the first time. My heart sinks when I note that she is taller than I, though the long tapering limbs that make up her arms and undoubtedly her legs suddenly take on a new appeal I hadn’t thought to appreciate when first learning of our betrothal.
She is beautiful with her rose-gold hair and soft green eyes that bespeak nothing but gentleness. Her cheekbones are high and well sculpted, her nose long but not unattractive. Her mouth, though not full, gives itself over to a wide, eager smile, revealing a row of straight white teeth.
The king and his new queen consort oversee the formalities themselves, the queen ever doting towards her sister, rubbing her back as she introduces us.
I cannot look the girl directly in the face as I pull at the ring that has decided to make its home on my middle finger. My slim fingers seem as though they have expanded to three times their size in the last two minutes, and my hand trembles as it works at the stubborn piece of jewellery. At last it gives and I offer a grunt of surprise.
The princess laughs.
I keep my head bowed, holding out the ring. “Here,” I say, unceremoniously. “I plight my troth.”
“Lord Thomas,” remonstrates the queen in good-natured tones, “aren’t you going to 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