Prologue
Blood. It is on my kerchief when I cough, it is the metallic taste in my mouth which nothing can cleanse and yet, every day, I feel there is blood on my hands. Invisible to all but me.
I have lived without them for two years – my daughter, my son. My other daughter, for her own safety, lives away from our family with its tainted lineage and its cursed name.
He did this to me as an act of revenge. He destroyed us all, one by one by one, in a myriad of devious and wicked ways. None challenge him. None know the truth, but one day, my tale will be told. I shall reveal his villainy, his cruelty and the evil blackness of his sorcerer’s heart.
My words are written and hidden inside the book from Cerensthorpe Abbey.
When I die, which will be soon, the book will pass to my remaining child.
Her guardianship will endure, as will her line, until the day, when one shall come who will hear the curlews without fear, who will watch the white falcon rise again and catch her feathers as they drift across time.
When this woman arrives, our truths will be told and the real reason behind the fall of the Boleyns will be writ large at last.
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
With the death of my girl
And my boy,
So dies your line,
So dies your name,
By Tudor blood the Tudors slain.
In broken faith, in broken trust.
Crown and cradle, dust to dust.
— ELIZABETH BOLEYN, COUNTESS OF WILTSHIRE.