Chapter 3
Blood pooled on her fingertip and she sucked it, darting her finger into her mouth with a quick practised movement as she did not want to mar the pale linen she was embroidering as a present for her father.
‘Careful, Lizzie,’ said Anne who sat beside her. ‘Make smaller movements with the needle; the more delicate your touch, the less likely you are to hurt yourself.’
‘There was a knot in the silk,’ she explained, ‘and I tugged too hard. When it released unexpectedly, it caught my finger.’
‘Where’s the silver thimble Mama gave you?’ asked Anne, but before Elizabeth could reply, they heard footsteps in the corridor outside, followed by a firm rap on the door.
‘May I enter?’ came the voice of Thomas Howard the Younger, Elizabeth’s eldest brother.
‘Of course,’ called Elizabeth. ‘We’ve told you before, you don’t have to knock.’
‘This solar is designed for women,’ he said. ‘It’s polite to give you warning of a male attendee.’
‘Come in and sit down,’ said Anne, ushering Thomas to the fireplace.
‘Thank you, Anne, but this is a short visit, Mama asked me to send the news that Papa is shortly to be released from the Tower,’ he said and smiled, his narrow face lighting up with delight.
‘This is wonderful news,’ exclaimed Elizabeth, pushing aside the frame she was using to hold her sewing in place and throwing herself into her elder brother’s arms. ‘Will his title be restored? Is he a duke again? Will you be an earl?’
At nearly seventeen, Thomas Howard, referred to by the family as Younger, was a wiry, slender youth of medium height, with dark hair and eyes. He had inherited the long Howard face and, what his mother described as, a patrician nose.
‘Papa has been restored to his title of the Earl of Surrey and to the Order of the Garter, but the dukedom continues to be held back.’
‘Why?’ said Elizabeth.
‘It’s a test of his loyalty,’ replied Thomas. ‘He will be granted access to a portion of his lands but not all. It’s very cunning of the king.’
There was grudging respect in Thomas’s voice.
‘Do you like King Henry?’ Elizabeth asked.
Thomas grinned and Elizabeth felt as though the sun had chosen to shine for her. She adored her older brother, but she was wary of his quicksilver changes of mood: he could take offence at the smallest comment, but when he chose to be charming, she felt all the wrongs in her life were righted.
When they had fled Shurland Hall four years earlier, arriving at the convent, tired, hot and scared, Thomas had comforted her, and when she had produced a packet of playing of cards to distract them all from their difficulties, he had scooped her up and spun her around in a circle, exclaiming, ‘You are the cleverest little sister in the world. The hours will pass far more quickly now we can play cards.’
She had glowed with pride.
They had spent a month in the convent while her mother waited for news.
As Anne had predicted, Henry VII could not execute every man who had fought against him.
Instead, he held them prisoner while he laid his plans.
His first political act was to reinstate the legitimacy of the former royal family, he then married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville, forever uniting the houses of Lancaster and York.
The Tudor rose – comprising the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster – became a potent symbol for the new Tudor reign.
Content they were in no immediate danger, in early October, six weeks after their desperate flight to safety, Lady Howard had gathered up her children and moved them to Ashwellthorpe Manor in Suffolk – a property she had inherited through her dower from her first marriage to Henry Bourchier.
Despite doing verbal battle with one of the king’s servants, Baron Fitzwalter, who tried to have her removed, Lady Howard’s rights to the manor could not be denied and the family settled in for the duration.
To attain land and wealth, during his first parliament in December 1485, Henry VII announced his decision to backdate his reign to the day before the Battle of Bosworth.
The battle had taken place on 22 August 1485, but the statute books now showed Henry Tudor as monarch from 21 August, making him the defending king – the hero of the piece, rather than the potential usurper.
It also meant he could claim the nobles who had fought for King Richard were traitors for opposing the rightful monarch.
Elizabeth’s father was one of twenty-six noblemen attainted during Henry VII’s first parliament and whose lands were confiscated by the crown.
Yet, despite the Earl of Surrey’s continuing imprisonment, the sizeable sum set aside for his upkeep showed his life was not in danger and hinted at the possibility of rehabilitation.
As the years passed, Elizabeth’s two brothers, Edward and Edmund, were invited to court to act as pages and begin their training as courtiers styled under the name the Lords Howard.
Shortly before the Battle of Bosworth, Thomas the Younger had been betrothed to Anne Plantagenet, sister of the now-queen, Elizabeth of York.
This betrothal was not rescinded, and the entire family took this as another sign there would one day be royal forgiveness for the Howard family.
Elizabeth remained at Ashwellthorpe, watching as her older siblings set out to court, dreaming of the day she would join them. Whenever they visited London, as they were at present, she was overawed by the sophistication and glamour her siblings had acquired.
‘I’ll be an important lady one day,’ she had announced to Anne a few nights earlier.
‘Even greater than Mama?’ Anne had asked.
‘Perhaps,’ she had replied loftily before they collapsed into giggles.
‘What’s that supposed to be?’ asked Thomas, looking at Elizabeth’s tapestry. ‘Is it a pigeon?’
‘Don’t be mean,’ Elizabeth retorted. ‘It’s a falcon, as you can very well see.’
She put her hands on her hips and pouted.
‘Very grand,’ Thomas said with a grin. ‘Why a falcon, Lizzie?’
‘It’s because of The Squire’s Tale,’ she sighed, returning to her chair and the small sampler she was embroidering. She loved the creativity of sewing and was working hard to improve her stitching, which was often uneven.
Thomas looked at Anne for clarification.
‘Geoffrey Chaucer’s story, The Canterbury Tales,’ said Anne. ‘In The Squire’s Tale, there’s a romantic story about a falcon who has her heart broken by an unfaithful mate—’
‘It’s more than that,’ interrupted Elizabeth.
‘The squire is the son of the knight, who tells the first tale, which is about courtly love, but the squire’s account is more exotic.
It’s set in the court of Genghis Khan and there’s a princess called Canacee, who is given a magic ring that allows her to talk to and understand the language of birds.
As the princess walks in the gardens of the palace, she comes across a distraught falcon who has beaten herself so badly with her own wings that her red blood pours down the white bark of the tree where she sits.
The princess scoops the falcon up and comforts her, asking her to tell her what has happened so Canacee can help her.
‘The falcon explains that she had been raised gently and her life had been full of love.
Near her lived a tercelet, the male of her species, who was handsome and charming.
He appeared noble and after years of persuasion and wooing of the falcon, she capitulated because she believed his promises of true love.
They were happy for several years; she thought their marriage was true until he told her he must leave the land where they lived.
‘She felt he must be suffering like her and as the weeks passed, she cried, thinking her heart would break, but she was sure he would return. Then word came to her that the tercelet had another lover, a kite, a scavenger bird of low rank and the falcon succumbed to the devastation of lost love.’
‘Did she die?’ asked Thomas, amused at his sister’s dramatic rendition.
‘No, Canacee had great skill as a healer and she tended the bird’s wounds, wrapping her in soft bandages and placing her in a basket draped with blue cloth – the colour of faithfulness – while on the outside they painted derogatory pictures of unfaithful birds, such as the tercelet, the lecherous sparrow and the magpie.
Unfortunately, the falcon’s reunion with the tercelet is never told because the franklin interrupts the squire in order to tell his own tale. ’
Thomas gave a derisive laugh. ‘Women are fools when it involves matters of the heart,’ he said.
‘They would be wise to understand men want a wife who will support and love them but never challenge them. Look at Mama, she does all she can to free Papa and when he is home, she will follow him wherever he is sent in his quest to rebuild his reputation and our family honour.’
‘A task any good wife would undertake,’ said Anne quietly.
‘Practicality is what men require,’ said Thomas, ‘not romantic nonsense. You’d be wise to remember my advice, Lizzie.’
He gave them both a pompous look, then turned on his heel and marched away along the corridor, his boots ringing on the stone floors.
‘Lizzie, where are you?’
Her feet flew down the stairs. The horses had arrived half an hour earlier, but her mother had told her to wait to be summoned.
‘Papa might be tired and prefer to rest before he greets everyone,’ she had said, but her tone had been kind and Elizabeth had understood.
She was nine years old now, it was time to behave with the manners of a courtier, a great lady in the making, rather than a mewling child. Yet, upon hearing her father’s voice, her dignity deserted her and she flew down the wide staircase, flinging herself into his arms.
‘You’ve grown since I last saw you,’ he exclaimed.
‘We visited you less than a month ago, Papa,’ she said. Then with great solemnity she showed him the piece of quartz.
‘You kept it?’ he said.
‘To keep you safe,’ she replied, and he hugged her even more tightly.
The Earl of Surrey’s incarceration had changed during its long years. At first, he was held in relative comfort, but the visits of his family were rare. As time passed and he proved an exemplary prisoner, his standard of living improved.
In 1487, when the imposter Lambert Simnel had arrived with an army in Furness, claiming to be Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, a cousin of the lost princes, an opportunity had arisen for Thomas Howard to escape from the Tower of London.
‘The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Digby, came to me, offering the keys to my accommodation so I might escape and join the Simnel rebellion,’ he had explained to his family.
‘It was clearly a trap, a test of my loyalty to the new king. I replied, “I shall remain in the Tower until such time as our good sovereign lord, King Henry VII, releases me and not before.”’
When he heard this, Henry Tudor was suitably impressed and the following year, in March 1488, the king pardoned the earl, but he did not release him. From then on, the Earl of Surrey’s accommodation improved, with Lady Howard and, on occasions, members of his family, allowed to visit.
‘Not seeing you every day has been hard, Lizzie,’ he said, releasing her, ‘but I have exciting news.’
‘What?’
‘The king has a very special job for me and it’ll involve all the family,’ he said. ‘There’s a rebellion in the north and with my skills as a soldier and negotiator, he has decided to send us to live in Yorkshire at Sheriff Hutton Castle.’
‘A castle?’ said Elizabeth in awe.
‘Yes, a castle, and after your mother, you will be its queen.’