Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (59 page)

With the English fleet unable to go forwards and the French sitting snug in harbor, he took a handful of rowing boats and threw them in, under the French guns. It was a waste, a wicked waste of his men and of himself—and only because he was too impatient to wait and too young to think. I am sorry that we sent him, dearest Edward, dearest young fool, to his own death. But then I remember that my husband is no older and certainly no wiser and has even less knowledge of the world of war, and that even I, a woman of twenty-seven years old, married to a boy who has just reached his majority, can make the mistake of thinking that I cannot fail.

Edward himself led the boarding party onto the flagship of the French admiral—an act of extraordinary daring—and almost at once his men failed him, God forgive them, and called him away when the battle was too hot for them. They jumped down from the deck of the French ship into their own rowing boats, some of them leaping into the sea in their terror to be away, shot ringing around them like hailstones. They cast off, leaving him fighting like a madman, his back to the mast, hacking around him with his sword, hopelessly outnumbered. He made a dash to the side and if a boat had been there, he might have dropped down to it. But they had gone. He tore the gold whistle of his office from his neck and flung it far
out into the sea, so that the French would not have it, and then he turned and fought them again. He went down, still fighting; a dozen swords stabbed him. He was still fighting as he slipped and fell, supporting himself with one arm, his sword still parrying. Then, a hungry blade slashed at his sword arm, and he was fighting no more. They could have stepped back and honored his courage, but they did not. They pressed him further and fell on him like hungry dogs on a skin in Smithfield market. He died with a hundred stab wounds.

They threw his body into the sea, they cared so little for him, these French soldiers, these so-called Christians. They could have been savages, they could have been Moors for all the Christian charity they showed. They did not think of the supreme unction, of a prayer for the dead; they did not think of his Christian burial, though a priest watched him die. They flung him into the sea as if he were nothing more than some spoilt food to be nibbled by fishes.

Then they realized that it was Edward Howard, my Edward Howard, the admiral of the English navy, and the son of one of the greatest men in England, and they were sorry that they had thrown him overboard like a dead dog. Not for honor—oh, not them—but because they could have ransomed him to his family, and God knows we would have paid well to have sweet Edward restored to us. They sent the sailors out in boats with hooks to drag his body up again. They sent them to fish for his poor dead body as if he were salvage from a wreck. They gutted his corpse like a carp. They cut out his heart, salted it down like cod; they stole his clothes for souvenirs and sent them to the French court. The butchered scraps that were left of him they sent home to his father and to me.

This savage story reminds me of Hernando Pérez del Pulgar who led such a desperately daring raid into the Alhambra. If they had caught him they would have killed him, but I don’t think even the Moors would have cut out his heart for their amusement. They would have acknowledged him as a great enemy, a man to be honored. They would have returned his body to us with one of their grand chivalric gestures. God knows, they would have composed a song about him within a week, we would have been singing it the length and breadth of Spain within a fortnight, and they would have made a fountain to commemorate his beauty within a month. They were Moors, but they had a grace that these Christians utterly lack. When I think of these Frenchmen it makes me ashamed to call the Moors barbarians.

Henry is shaken by this story and by our defeat, and Edward’s father ages ten years in the ten minutes that it takes the messenger to tell him that his son’s body is downstairs, in a cart, but his clothes have been sent as spoil to Madame Claude, the daughter of the King of France, his heart is a keepsake for the French admiral. I can comfort neither of them; my own shock is too great. I go to my chapel and I take my sorrow to Our Lady, who knows herself what it is to love a young man and to see Him go out to His death. And when I am on my knees I swear that the French will regret the day that they cut my champion down. There will be a reckoning for this filthy act. They will never be forgiven by me.

*     *     *

S
UMMER
1513

The death of Edward Howard made Katherine work even harder for the preparations of the English army to leave for Calais. Henry might be going to playact a war, but he would use real shot and cannon, swords and arrows, and she wanted them to be well made and their aim to be true. She had known the realities of war all her life, but with the death of Edward Howard, Henry now saw, for the first time, that it was not like in a storybook, it was not like a joust. A well-favored, brilliant young man like Edward could go out in the sunshine and come home, butchered into pieces, in a cart. To his credit, Henry did not waver in his courage as this truth came home to him, as he saw young Thomas Howard step up to his brother’s place, as he saw Edward’s father summoning his tenants and calling in his debts to provide troops to avenge his son.

They sent the first part of the army to Calais in May, and Henry prepared to follow them with the second batch of troops in June. He was more somber than he had ever been before.

Katherine and Henry rode slowly through England from Greenwich to Dover for Henry’s embarkation. The towns turned out to feast them and muster their men as they went through. Henry and Katherine had matching great white horses and Katherine rode astride, her long blue gown spread out all around. Henry, riding at her side, looked magnificent, taller than any other man in the ranks, stronger than most, golden-haired and smiling all around.

In the mornings when they rode out of a town they would both wear armor: matching suits of silver and gilt. Katherine wore only a breastplate and a helmet, made from finely beaten metal and chased with gold
patterns. Henry wore full armor from toes to fingertips every day, whatever the heat. He rode with his visor up and his blue eyes dancing and a gold circlet around his helmet. The standard-bearers carrying Katherine’s badge on one side, and Henry’s on the other, rode either side of them and when people saw the queen’s pomegranate and Henry’s rose they shouted, “God Bless the King!” and “God Bless the Queen!” When they left a town, with the troops marching behind them, and the bowmen before them, the townspeople would crowd the sides of the road for a good mile to see them ride by, and they threw rose petals and rosebuds on the road in front of the horses. All the men marched with a rose in their lapels or in their hats, and they sang as they marched: bawdy songs of old England, but also sometimes ballads of Henry’s composing.

They took nearly two weeks to get to Dover and the time was not wasted, for they gathered supplies and recruited troops in every village. Every man in the land wanted to be in the army to defend England against France. Every girl wanted to say that her lad had gone to be a soldier. The whole country was united in wanting revenge against the French. And the whole country was confident that with the young king at the head of a young army, it could be done.

*     *     *

I am happier, knowingly happier, than I have been since the death of our son. I am happier than I had thought possible. Henry comes to my bed every night during the feasting, dancing, marching tour to the coast; he is mine in thought and word and deed. He is going on a campaign of my organizing, he is safely diverted from the real war that I will have to fight, and he never has a thought, or says a word, but he shares it with me. I pray that in one of these nights on the road, riding south to the coast together, in the heightened tension that comes with war, we will make another child, another boy, another rose for England, as Arthur was.

*     *     *

Thanks to Katherine and Thomas Wolsey the arrangements for the embarkation were timed to perfection. Not for this English army the usual delay while last-minute orders were given, and forgotten essentials desperately ordered. Henry’s ships—four hundred of them—brightly painted, with pennants flying, sails ready-rigged—were waiting to take the troops to France. Henry’s own ship, blazing in gold leaf with the red dragon flying at its stern, bobbed at the dock. His royal guard, superbly
trained, their new livery of Tudor green and white, spangled with sequins, were paraded on the quay, his two suits of gold-inlaid armor were packed on board, his specially trained white horses were in their stalls. The preparations were as meticulous as those of the most elaborate of court masques and Katherine knew that for many of the young men, they were looking forward to war as they did to a court entertainment.

Everything was ready for Henry to embark and sail for France when in a simple ceremony, on the strand at Dover, he took the great seal of state and before them all invested Katherine as regent in his place, governor of the realm and captain general of the English forces for home defense.

*     *     *

I make sure that my face is grave and solemn when he names me Regent of England, and I kiss his hand and then I kiss him full on the mouth to wish him Godspeed. But as his ship is taken in tow by the barges, crosses the bar of the harbor, and then unfurls her sails to catch the wind and sets out for France, I could sing aloud for joy. I have no tears for the husband who is going away because he has left me with everything that I have ever wanted. I am more than Princess of Wales, I am more than Queen of England, I am governor of the realm, I am captain general of the army, this is my country indeed, and I am sole ruler.

And the first thing I will do—indeed, perhaps the only thing I will do with the power vested in me, the only thing that I must do with this God-given chance—is defeat the Scots.

*     *     *

As soon as Katherine arrived at Richmond Palace she gave Thomas Howard, Edward’s younger brother, his orders to take the cannon from the armories in the Tower and set sail with the whole English fleet, north to Newcastle to defend the borders against the Scots. He was not the admiral that his brother had been but he was a steady young man and she thought she could rely on him to do his part to deliver the vital weapons to the north.

Every day brought Katherine news from France by messengers that she had already posted along the way. Wolsey had strict instructions to report back to the queen the progress of the war. From him she wanted an accurate analysis. She knew that Henry would give her an optimistic account. It was not all good news. The English army had arrived in France; there was much excitement in Calais and feasting and celebrations.
There were parades and musters and Henry had been much congratulated on his handsome armor and his smart troops. But the Emperor Maximilian failed to muster his own army to support the English. Instead, pleading poverty but swearing his enthusiasm to the cause, he came to the young prince to offer his sword and his service.

It was clearly a heady moment for Henry, who had not yet even heard a shot fired in anger, to have the Holy Roman Emperor offering his services, overwhelmed by the glamorous young prince.

Katherine frowned when she read that part of Wolsey’s account, calculating that Henry would hire the emperor at an inflated amount and would thus have to pay an ally who had promised to come at his own expense for a mercenary army. She recognized at once the double-dealing that had characterized this campaign from the start. But at least it would mean that the emperor was with Henry in his first battle, and Katherine knew that she could rely on the experienced older man to keep the impulsive young king safe.

On the advice of Maximilian, the English army laid siege to Thérouanne—a town which the Holy Roman Emperor had long desired, but of no tactical value to England—and Henry, safely distanced from the short-range guns on the walls of the little town, walked alone through his camp at midnight, spoke comforting words to the soldiers on watch, and was allowed to fire his first cannon.

The Scots, who had been waiting only until England was defenseless, with king and army in France, declared war against the English and started their own march south. Wolsey wrote with alarm to Katherine, asking her if she needed the return of some of Henry’s troops to face this new threat. Katherine replied that she thought she could defend against a border skirmish, and started a fresh muster of troops from every town in the country, using the lists she had already prepared.

She commanded the assembly of the London militia and went out in her armor, on her white horse, to inspect them before they started their march north.

*     *     *

I look at myself in the mirror as my ladies-in-waiting tie on my breastplate, and my maid-in-waiting holds my helmet. I see the unhappiness in their faces, the way the silly maid holds the helmet as if it is too heavy for her, as if none of this should be happening, as if I were not born for this moment: now. The moment of my destiny.

I draw a silent breath. I look so like my mother in my armor that it could be her reflection in the mirror, standing so still and proud, with her hair caught back from her face and her eyes shining as bright as the burnished gilt on her breastplate; alive at the prospect of battle, gleaming with joy at her confidence in victory.

“Are you not afraid?” María de Salinas asks me quietly.

“No.” I speak the truth. “I have spent all my life waiting for this moment. I am a queen, and the daughter of a queen who had to fight for her country. I have come to this, my own country, at the very moment that it needs me. This is not a time for a queen who wants to sit on her throne and award prizes for jousting. This is a time for a queen who has the heart and stomach of a man. I am that queen. I shall ride out with my army.”