The Last of Days

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

The last days of Henry VIII's reign were taut with tension as the Council factions, ruthless and power-hungry, manoeuvred and fought. Not to mention the tension within the despot himself, his fears and phobias, the obsession he'd developed with the sexually-dominating Howard women. THE LAST OF DAYS chronicles the fascinating disintegration of this King, the murderous schemes that encircled him, and the emergence of the ruthless, blood-smattered political order that followed his death.

Release date: June 6, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 219

Sample

Henry VII (1485–1509): victor of Bosworth, founder of the Tudor dynasty

Henry VIII: King of England (1491–47)

Henry Fitzroy: Duke of Richmond (1519–36): bastard son of Henry VIII by his mistress Bessie Blunt

Edward VI (1537–53): Henry VIII’s sole male heir by Jane Seymour

Mary (1516–58): daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

Elizabeth (1533–1603): daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

Catherine of Aragon (died 1536)

Anne Boleyn (executed 1536)

Jane Seymour (died 1537)

Anne of Cleves (divorced 1539)

Katherine Howard (executed 1542)

Katherine Parr (died 1548)

Edward IV: king 1471–83

Edward and Richard: sons of Edward IV, both mysteriously disappeared whilst lodged in the Tower of London

Elizabeth of York: daughter of Edward IV, wife of Henry VII, mother of Henry VIII

Richard III: king 1483–85, brother of Edward IV

Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530): Cardinal Archbishop of York, Henry’s principal minister before falling into disgrace

Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540): chief minister to Henry VIII, executed 1540

Thomas More (1478–1535): humanist, scholar and statesman, executed 1535

Edward Seymour: first Earl of Hertford, courtier and general

Thomas Seymour: brother of the above, courtier and admiral

John Dudley: son of Edmund Dudley (executed by Henry VIII), courtier and soldier

Sir William Paget: self-made courtier and secretary to the Council

Thomas Wriothesley: chancellor under Henry VIII

Thomas Cranmer: scholar, Henry VIII’s confessor and Archbishop of Canterbury; presided over Henry VIII’s divorce and his break with Rome

Stephen Gardiner: scholar, Bishop of Winchester; a conservative, secretly a Romanist who wanted England to return to the Church of Rome

Thomas Howard: third Duke of Norfolk; one of Henry’s principal ministers

Henry Howard: Earl of Surrey, son of the above, executed 1547

Charles V: Holy Roman Emperor, nephew of Catherine of Aragon

Francis I: King of France, contemporary and rival of Henry VIII

In the wilds of Lincolnshire, at the very heart of the Fens, there once stood a sprawling gloomy tavern called the Hoop of Hades. God knows why, but this place had acquired a fearsome reputation as the gathering hall for devils. The tavern once served local villages totally annihilated during the Great Pestilence. Now, according to legend, on St Walpurgis Eve, the vigil of All Saints, a local necromancer could summon in all the demons and ghosts who roamed the surrounding wastelands. I freely admit, demons from Hell do not frighten me. I have met so many in the flesh, I would hardly turn a hair if an evil sprite popped up to confront me in a Cheapside alleyway. Nevertheless, this legend fascinates me, because in order to achieve this great summoning the necromancer had to use a chamber at the heart of the tavern called Haceldema – ‘the Place of Blood’. An interesting conceit which I can only report, as both tavern and chamber were burnt to the ground during the Great Revolt against His Malignant Majesty King Henry VIII in that unholy Year of Our Lord 1536.

This journal, by my good self, Will Somers, is my gathering place. I was born in the year of terror 1485, when the present king’s father toppled Richard III at Bosworth. To be sure, I have travelled far since then, in body as well as soul. I first glimpsed the light of day at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire. In my tenth year, my family moved to Easton Neston in Northamptonshire, where I entered the service of a local lord, Sir Richard Fermor. I graduated as his minstrel, fool, jester, innocent; whatever men wish to call me. In 1525, the year Rome was savagely sacked, I met our present King Henry at Greenwich. My master, Sir Richard, allowed me to perform at a royal banquet and there I pitched my standard. In brief, I made Henry laugh until the tears poured down those smooth, round royal cheeks and those light blue eyes, which later froze into icicles of pure terror, brimmed with merriment. Henry threw coins at me, bribed my master and cosseted me like a woman with her babe until I entered his service.

Oh, those were the golden days when the royal lion was magnificent in size, spirit and strength. A prince amongst princes who would stride out, one hand on my scrawny shoulder, the other looped around the arm of More, Wolsey or Cromwell. Of course he eventually sent all of these to the scaffold; as the skies clouded black, Henry’s heart turned hard and the laughter finally ended.

All men talk to themselves, either directly or in private. Henry talks to me. I have become his listening post, his whipping boy; a ready, always attentive audience for the royal tantrums, temper, tears and troubles. So, with Henry’s knowledge, now, in these last of days, November 1546, I have begun this journal. Some twenty years have passed since I met the Merry Monarch of Greenwich, who has now shape-shifted to become the Malevolent Monster of Westminster. This journal will be my Haceldema, my place of blood, my gathering place, like that long-vanished tavern chamber. (I trust my own heart. Henry is plotting, and when that comes to full flower, blood will flow.) Here I will summon all the demons, and God knows their name is legion. First comes harsh-faced John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, son of a traitor, who has climbed through the tangled branches of politics’ thorny tree. A dog of a man, a brutal but brave soldier, Dudley has pitched his standard alongside that of two other soldiers, Edward Seymour, Earl of Warwick, sly and subtle, and his proud-faced, womanising brother Thomas. These two have gained access to the Council because their sister, Henry’s queen Jane Seymour, died giving birth to Henry’s only male heir, the puny nine-year-old Edward. Others appear. Whey-faced Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and, very rarely now, the King’s conscience. Sir William Paget, vixen-eyed and sharp-featured; a self-made man, Paget has risen to be secretary to the Council and strives to maintain harmony amongst the wolf pack. Last, and certainly the worst of the wolves, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the constant coat-turner and time-server who likes nothing more than to see a man (or, more deliciously, a woman), writhe in agony.

This league of self-serving, bloodthirsty opportunists are the reformists, dedicated to making the break with the Church of Rome deep and permanent. Confronting them are the Howards of Norfolk, led by Thomas Howard, third duke, a man steeped in years and guile. Norfolk is a heavy-eyed, long-faced hypocrite. At court he drapes rosaries and relics around his neck, but in his bed at Kenninghall he keeps his blowsy mistress, Bess Holland. Norfolk, like Paget, is secretive; both observe the rule ‘Never tell a secret to more than one person’. He is always accompanied by his son, who is a far better man. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is a roaring boy, a soldier, a courtier, and above all, something more lasting: a brilliant poet, whose verses dazzle the mind and catch the heart. With his wayward eye and foppish ways, he has one vice: an overweening arrogance. Perhaps Surrey has not forgotten, as Henry certainly has not, that the Howards fought against the Tudors at Bosworth, and that his grandfather won England’s greatest victory of the age, the destruction of James IV and all the flower of Scottish chivalry at Flodden Field. While the Seymours crouch close to the throne through poor dead Jane, the Howards crawl more slowly. Norfolk’s daughter was married to the King’s only bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, but poor Fitzroy, of weak stock, died young, and his widow, if gossip is correct, has certainly caught our king’s lecherous eye. In politics, the Norfolks are like the others: self, self and self again. In religion, they hark back to the Church of Rome. They are guided in this by the jug-eared, proud-hearted Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

In the antechamber beyond, to continue the metaphor, others wait. Princess Mary, sallow-featured but kindly-eyed, constantly mourns her dead mother, Catherine of Aragon. Henry’s sixth wife, the prim, pure Katherine Parr, also mourns, or so I think. She grieves at being locked and chained to her royal husband, whilst secretly cherishing, perhaps, the unmasked admiration of the lecherous Thomas Seymour. Somewhere too, but deep, deep in the shadows, stands Balaam, son of Beor, the man with the far-seeing gaze. Oh yes, Balaam the spy, the scurrier, the twilight man, always cloaked in the dappled shadow of secrecy. He is Princess Mary’s link with those abroad who watch like hawks the maze of treacherous politics that has become the English court, and those rash or brave enough to thread that maze. All these assemble here in this journal, my Haceldema. They wait to dance attendance on their dread lord, the Master of Menace, the leader of the swirling, dangerous masque, Henry the King. No longer is Henry the golden-haired, fair-bonneted chevalier, resplendent in face and form. No, he has grown gross and heavy, eyes black slits in his podgy, moon-like face. A slow-moving mass of murderous deceit. ‘Hola!’ as the Spanish say; the King has arrived and the swirling dance takes another sinister turn.

Is our king dying? This constant question opened the doors of darkness and agitated my heart even as I returned to Westminster today. Henry, once the proudest monarch and the most glorious prince, is certainly declining, his sun setting in tawdry splendour. I was still pondering upon this when I disembarked at King’s Steps to be met on the quayside by Sir Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Spears, His Majesty’s personal bodyguard of halberdiers. Scarlet-faced Wingfield, moustache and beard all bristly, questioned me closely about my journey along the river. He listened to my replies, nodded sagely and led me deep into Westminster Palace towards the King’s secret chambers. It was late afternoon and the light was dying. Squares of pure wax glowed in their silver dishes. Torches flared beneath their caps in the cobbled yards, lamps glittered along the galleries. We passed empty chambers and rooms, the dwelling place of ghosts, though the palace kitchens we went through seemed merry enough, their fleshing tables heaped with slaughtered larks, storks, gannets, capons and pheasants. Master Bricket, master chef and a very valiant trencher-man, explained how he was preparing a stew of sparrows, gelatines, and game pie with a mess of cucumber lettuce and succulent herb purslane, all favourites of the King.

Deeper into the palace we went, where the floors of the chambers were strewn with fresh rushes, moist and piquant to the smell. The royal presence chamber I passed lay empty. The royal table on the dais was unattended, though steaming dishes were still served for the King by bare-headed courtiers who scuttled and bowed as if they really were in the presence of His Dread Majesty. In the antechamber councillors clustered in their dark-furred robes, only the white of their cambric shirts and the glitter of jewellery catching the light. And yet, a true hall of shadows! A contagion, a miasma seems to infect Westminster Palace, a place crammed with the forfeited chattels of those caught up in the furious thunder around the throne. Henry’s court remains steeped in dark deceits and false favours, a shadow court paying service to a shadow king.

The King’s sickness seems to infect the elegant galleries, their ceilings marvellously wrought in stonework and gold. The news of his weakness creeps like a ghost past the wainscoting of carved wood and a thousand resplendent figurines in their countless niches. Everything appears tarnished. The heavy gold- and silver-thread tapestries are moth-nibbled. The thick glass in the mullion windows is stained and dirty. The courtyards, herb plots and gardens overlooked by these same windows remain weed-choked. The gilded butterflies of the court whisper how the King is past caring; oh, how wrong they are! He cares very much. He reminds me of a boar, heavy and shaggy-coated, hunted and wounded, so even more ferocious and dangerous for that. Memories of the past throng the dark chambers of Henry’s marble heart. Is he trying to exorcise them? Is that why he wants me, Will Somers, hollow eyes in a lean face, shoulders hunched, in constant attendance upon him, as I have been for the last twenty years? I know Henry. He may be failing, but he is still plotting furiously, and that is why I keep this journal. I wish to chronicle these times, as well as record any coming storm.

This King is never more dangerous than when he broods. He worries about the ghosts of executed traitors that throng Westminster, unwilling to leave the goods seized from their estates: the purple-embroidered velvet bed coverings trimmed with gold that once belonged to Buckingham; the chamber furnishings of Edward Neville; the robes of the de la Poles, not to mention the fourteen thousand pounds of gold and silver, crosses and chalices looted from Cromwell’s house at Austin Friars. Memories of those who served and failed him haunt my master. He mumbles how the ghosts of all the Thomases ring his bed at night: Wolsey, More and Cromwell. They are brought by Thomas Becket, whose sanctity and relics the King so resolutely destroyed, blowing Becket’s blissful bones from a cannon. Henry wakes in the dead of night and complains of these creatures of the mist, who cast no shadow in the moonlight, noiseless in their tread, fresh from the wastelands of the dead where no bird sings. All this rests heavily on our king, though not on his Council, that pack of ravenous wolves, greedy for power, those pernicious bloodsuckers of fallen men. As I passed through the chambers, I glimpsed my lords Dudley, Seymour, Wriothesley and others, Achitophels incarnate, all seemingly busy on this or that. In other rooms scurriers, couriers and messengers lounged booted and spurred, their horses ready in the freezing courtyards below to take messages across Henry’s ice-bound kingdom.

A place of shifting murky light is how Goodman Balaam describes the palace. Long deserted galleries, fitfully lit; antechambers where those who move do so like the slippery shades of shape-shifters. The King’s own inner chamber was closely guarded, its door half open. Inside, my lord Paget, that master of Hell, fur cloak still gleaming with river wet, as were his bonnet, beard and moustache. Paget’s eyes glowed with cunning. Had he also been busy in the city and just returned? As always, I acted the humble commoner overcome by his surroundings. I kept my eyes down, shuffling my feet. In truth, the royal chamber is luxurious, hung with tapestries, chairs covered with cloth of gold, stools capped and cushioned with silk and taffeta. The purest candles glow and pots of smouldering dry herbs scent the air. Nevertheless, none of these can stifle the rank odour from the straw-covered urine flasks in their holdings or the stench of the close stools, their potted cisterns covered in black velvet fringed with silver. One of the King’s trams, or moving chairs, stood half covered with tawny silk in a corner beneath a crucifix. His Satanic Majesty himself, clothed in a white bed shirt, his head towelled, sprawled on the great bed with its tester of scarlet, curtains of crimson and taffeta and counterpane of silk serge with golden-fringed pillows of the softest down. He lay back against the bolsters, a writing tray before him. On a table to his right were his rings and bracelets, placed there because the King’s hands and joints are mightily swollen. These precious items, as always, caught my eye: rings set with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, all looted from ransacked monasteries. Precious stones of all kinds, including the Great Sapphire of Glastonbury, hacked from golden crosses. I suspect such plunder plays on our king’s conscience.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! His Majesty of England is no great prince now but a mass of bloated flesh and dry broken skin. I try to recall him in his prime. A painting by Master Holbein hanging in one of the royal palaces boasts of a time when this king was haughty and regal, fearing neither God nor man. All has changed. Gone are the gowns of scarlet and gold brocade, the crimson cloak and jewelled daggers. No more the skirts slashed and puffed with white satin and clasped with jewelled brooches. No magnificent collars of twisted pearls and ruby medallions, no velvet cap jewelled and plumed with red and white feathers. The King is much declined, his eyes mere slits, black and gleaming. He uses glasses or spectacles, which he removes as he lifts his head; his lips are flaking, his cheeks and jowls sag and the skin of his face and hands has turned a puffy grey, dried and cracked, its bleeding dirtying the sheets and counterpane. The stench from his body is offensive, and now, as he moved, fresh gusts of putridity wafted towards me. His Majesty was studying a document; he pushed this away and lay back as Physician Huicke, with Paget, Seymour and Dudley fawning behind him, made the most humble obeisance.

‘Good Dr Huicke, good sweet Will.’ The King’s voice was piping and laboured, like that of a marsh bird, as if his very breath had to squeeze itself out. ‘Good sirs, I am indisposed with fever again.’ His Majesty glanced swiftly at me standing there in my green hooded jacket fringed with white craul, my red stockings pushed into dirty boots. For a few heartbeats he seemed to drop his mask of suffering, as if he was relishing playing the patient, those sunken slit eyes bright with malice. God be my witness, the chamber itself harboured a menace, as if foul spirits curled like vipers behind the tapestries, ready to lunge. Henry is the proudest of men and the self-styled most glorious prince, but he is a better mummer than I. I recalled the legends about him. How he had been likened to the Mouldwarp of ancient prophecy, a hairy man, a royal devil with a hide like goatskin who would first be praised before being cast down by sin and pride. His Majesty has certainly lived his life in war and strife, and in these, the last of days, danger still presses in from every side. Those who approach Westminster are terrified. They hang rue around their necks as an amulet against witchcraft and put sprigs of mountain ash and honeysuckle in the harness of their horses against the evil that allegedly seeps from the King’s decaying flesh.

His Majesty is certainly sick in both mind and body. He can no longer hunt, mount a horse or even climb a step. He has, according to himself, the worst legs in the world, and has to be carried up and down stairs and move in a travelling chair from chamber to chamber. He has two of these chairs, one upholstered in gold velvet and silk, the other in russet, each of them complete with brocaded footstools, for the royal legs are grossly bloated and bruised. The physicians, in their long, fur-sleeved gowns and black velvet caps, hover like carrion birds. They wave their urine flasks and, like the fools they are, constantly examine the King’s water and close stools. Balaam’s spy in the Bucklebury Place spice market, a man who moves easily among the apothecaries and herbalists, has devised a list of the potions, plasters, poultices, medications and elixirs being served to His Majesty: capathol water and rhubarb pills, tablets of rasis to fend off the plague, onions for his belly and greasy fomentations for his piles. Herbal mixtures and soft poultices are laid against His Majesty’s head, feet, neck, spleen and anus. The King’s face is swollen like a pig’s bladder, his back is humped, whilst his legs, ever since a fall some years ago, throb like pangs of fire from open ulcers. He has concocted his own pulses made from marsh mallows, linseed, silver, red coral and dragon’s blood, mixed with oil of roses and white wine. Yet despite all this, he is much fallen away, so unwell, considering his age and corpulence, he may not survive the winter. Sin, death and Hell have pressed their seals on this king, and all their retainers flock to attend on him.

I do not rejoice in such ruin. Henry reminds me of one of his tawny-coated lions kept in a cage at the Tower; Princeps was its name, a veritable prince amongst beasts, but it grew mangy, weak and wounded, though still dangerous. Henry the Magnificent, the striker-down of popes and princes, surveys his past and, believe me, mourns for what could have been. If only he’d begotten sons; not just sickly baby Edward or young Fitzroy, his bastard, now buried deep, but a pride of young lions to seal this kingdom as Tudor’s fief once and for all. If a scribbler poet wrote a tragedy about this king, this is what he should describe: what might have been. How Henry strove for this dream yet, in the end, failed so disastrously. A tyrant, yes, but if I sift amongst the years, I detect a true greatness and majesty, though deeply flawed and heavily tainted by so much blood.

‘I am ill.’ The King’s voice grew more strident, like the spoilt child he is. Eyes pleading desperately, he beat his fists against the bloodstained counterpane, demanding Physician Huicke attend him at once. Paget and the others withdrew, leaving only Huicke and myself. I helped the good doctor pull back the sheets and lifted the royal nightshirt to reveal the gruesome condition beneath. In truth, our king is a bolting hutch of beastliness. Ulcers perforate his legs, open fissures that Huicke tries to treat with horse hair and silk filament, tightening the skin around each ulcer so as to make it weep. The stench from the festering wounds is offensive. His Majesty lay cursing quietly, though now and again he would cry out for this person or that, some of whom are dead.

Next Huicke treated the King’s bowels and belly, the latter so swollen and extended the stomach alone is fifty-five inches in circumference. His Majesty, laughing weakly at some comment made by me, complained bitterly how his bowels were so tight all journeys to the close stool had proved futile. He was then turned on his stomach, legs apart, his body sprawled like that of a huge sow on a fleshing table, much extended like a corpse left for days on a battlefield. No more than a great flabby sack of flesh, horrid to see, foulsome in smell, bruised and marked a purplish-blue.

‘I am suffering,’ His Majesty cried out, ‘because of my sins against the innocents.’

‘What innocents?’ I retorted, thinking he was referring to Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, or the other great lords and ladies executed during his reign. The King, however, did not reply. He stretched out a puffy hand, picked up a set of coral Ave beads and began to thread these carefully through his fingers. I recognised them; they once belonged to the King’s mother, Elizabeth of York.

‘Your Majesty?’ I insisted, hoping to distract him. ‘What innocents have you sinned against?’

Henry beckoned me on to the bed, pulling me down beside him. ‘The princes,’ he murmured. ‘You know, Edward and Richard, the sons of my grandfather, Edward IV of York, the nephews of the usurper Richard.’

‘But we have the truth of that,’ I replied hoarsely. ‘Thomas More?’

The King’s eyes did not flicker; they remained cold, hard black stones in that hideously white puffy face.

‘More claims that Richard the Usurper killed the princes in the Tower.’

‘Not so, not so,’ murmured the King. ‘More was wrong on that, as he was about so many things.’ He stretched out, ignoring Huicke, who was working on his ulcerated legs again, a mass of dirty red blotches and festering scabs. ‘Those two boys died of a fever. They were walled up in a chamber in the royal lodgings; the room is still there. It contains two skeletons. I swear to God,’ Henry continued, ‘once I recover, I will remove those corpses and give them honourable burial.’

‘Why hasn’t someone done that before, Your Majesty? They were your mother’s brothers.’

‘Both princes died of the sweating sickness during the brief bloody reign of their usurping uncle. Richard was trapped. No one would believe their deaths were the result of a plague.’ Henry heaved a great sigh. ‘After all, they had been in his care. They shouldn’t have been in the Tower to begin with. In the summer heat, that fortress is a midden mess with evil vapours from its stinking moat.’

‘And your own father?’ I asked.

Henry forced a laugh. ‘Trapped also, Will. After his victory at Bosworth, my father entered London. He became affianced to Elizabeth of York, the princes’ sister. For her sake, he made careful search for her brothers. The secret chamber in the royal lodgings at the Tower was opened and the remains of the two boys found. My father could not publish what he had discovered without raising the su. . .