Historical Fiction

By stepping to one side a little and craning my neck, I could see the condemned man, accompanied by his priest, walk slowly from the Tower toward the green where the wooden platform was waiting, the block of wood placed center stage, the executioner dressed all ready for work in his shirtsleeves with a black hood over his head. It looked more like a masque than a real event, and I watched it as if it were a court entertainment.

The king, seated on his throne, looked distracted, as if he was running through his speech of forgiveness in his head. Behind him stood my husband of one year, William Carey, my brother, George, and my father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, all looking grave. I wriggled my toes inside my silk slippers and wished the king would hurry up and grant clemency so that we could all go to breakfast. I was only thirteen years old, I was always hungry. Continue reading.

The daffodils would be fit for a king. The delicate wild daffodils, their thousand heads bobbing and swaying with the wind, lightpetaled, light"stemmed, moving like a field of unripe barley before a summer breeze, scattered across the grass, thicker around the trunks of trees as if they were dewponds of gold. They looked like wildflowers; but they were not.

Tradescant had planned them, planted them, nourished them. He looked at them and smiled as if he were greeting friends.

Sir Robert Cecil strolled up, his uneven tread instantly recognizable in the crunch of the gravel. John turned and pulled off his hat.

"They look well," his lordship observed. "Yellow as Spanish gold."

ohn bowed. The two men were near each other in age — both in their thirties but the courtier was bent under a humped back and his face was lined by a lifetime of caution at court, and with pain from his twisted body. He was a small man, little more than five feet tall his enemies called him a dwarf behind his hunched back. Continue reading

Stephen's mouth was filling with mud, wet slurry pressed on his eyelids, slid into his nostrils like earthworms. He flailed helplessly against the weight of it on his face, on his body, in his hair. He felt the silty terrible power of it pinning him down. When he opened his mouth to scream it poured into his throat, he could taste its wetness: the terrible non"taste of earth. He choked on it, retching and heaving for breath, spitting and hawking.

He was drowning in it, he was being crushed by its weight, he was being buried alive.

His hands like paddles, he scrabbled against it, trying to claw a space for his face, and then he grabbed linen sheet, woollen blankets, counterpane, and he opened his eyes, clogged only by sleep, and saw the white ceiling of his home. He whooped like a sick child, gasping in terror, rubbing his face roughly, dragging his palm across his lips, across his

tongue where the dead taste still lingered. He whispered 'Oh God, oh God,' pitifully, over and over again. c Oh God, oh God.

Then he turned his head and saw her. In the doorway was his mother, her dressing"gown pulled on over her thick cotton nightdress, her tired face set in lines of fear and . . . something else. He stared at her, trying to read the expression on her face: disapproval. Continue reading

The four horse riders halted before the mighty closed gates of the city of Ravenna, the snow swirling around their hunched shoulders, while the manservant Freize, rode up to the wooden doors and, using his cudgel, hammered loudly and shouted: "Open up!'

"You won't forget what to say,' Luca reminded him quickly.

Inside, they could hear the bolts being slowly slid open.

"I should hope I can – though naturally truthful – tell a lie or two when required,' Freize said with quiet pride, while Brother Peter shook his head that he should be so reduced as to depend on Freize's ready dishonesty.

The gateway pierced the great wall that encircled the ancient city.

The defences were newly rebuilt; the city had just been occupied by its conquerors the Venetians, who were spreading their unique form of government " a republic " through all the neighbouring cities, fuelled by gold, driven by trade. Slowly the little sally"port door opened and a guard in the bright livery of the victors presented arms and waited for the travellers to request admission. Continue reading

"I don't belong here,' I said to myself. Before I even opened my eyes.

It was my morning ritual. To ward off the smell and the dirt and the fights and the noise of the day. To keep me in that bright green place in my mind which had no proper name; I called it "Wide'.

"I don't belong here,' I said again. A dirty"faced fifteen"year"old girl frowsy"eyed from sleep,

Her eyes, dark as blackberries, twinkled at me.

"I don't belong here,' I whispered once more to the dream world of Wide which faded even as I called to it. Then I said aloud to Dandy:

"Getting up?' Continue reading

PICCOLO, ITALY, NOVEMBER 1453

THE ROAD FROM ROME TO PESCARA, ITALY, NOVEMBER

The five travellers on horseback on the rutted track to Pescara made everyone turn and stare: the woman who brought them weak ale in a roadside inn; the peasant building a hewn stone wall by the side of the road; the boy trailing home from school to work in his father's vineyard.

Everyone smiled at the radiance of the couple at the front of the little cavalcade, for they were beautiful, young, and " as anyone could see " falling in love.

"But where's it all going to end, d'you think?' Freize asked Ishraq, nodding ahead to Luca and Isolde as they rode along the rulerstraight track that ran due east towards the Adriatic coast.

It was golden autumn weather and, though the deeply scored ruts in the dirt road would be impassable in wintertime, the going was good for now, the horses were would be impassable in wintertime, the going was good for now, the horses were strong and they were setting a fair pace to the coast. Continue reading

THERE WAS A SCREAM, and then the loud roar of fire enveloping silken hangings, then a mounting crescendo of shouts of panic that spread and spread from one tent to another as the flames ran too, leaping from one silk standard to another, running up guy ropes and bursting through muslin doors. Then the horses were neighing in terror and men shouting to calm them, but the terror in their own voices made it worse, until the whole plain was alight with a thousand

raging blazes, and the night swirled with smoke and rang with shouts and screams.

The little girl, starting up out of her bed in her fear, cried out in Spanish for her mother and screamed: "The Moors? Are the Moors coming for us?"

"Dear God, save us, they are firing the camp!" her nurse gasped. "Mother of God, they wil rape me and spit you on their sickle blades."

"Mother!" cried the child, struggling from her bed. "Where is my mother?" She dashed outside, her nightgown flapping at her legs, the hangings of her tent now alight and blazing up

behind her in an inferno of panic. Al the thousand, thousand tents in the camp were ablaze, sparks pouring up into the dark night sky like fiery fountains, blowing like a swarm of fireflies to carry the disaster onwards.

"Mother!" She screamed for help. Out of the flames came two huge, dark horses, like great, mythical beasts moving as one, jet black against the brightness of the fire. Continue reading

Before there was anything, there was the dream. Before Richard, before I even knew the hil s around Wideacre, the sweet rol ing green downs which encircle and guard my home – there was the dream. As far back as I can remember, the dream is there. Was always there.

And it is not the dream of a child. It is not my dream. It belongs to someone else. But I do not know whose dream it is.

In the dream I am hurt – hurt and heartbroken with a pain that I hope has never been felt in real life. My feet are sore from walking far on stony cold ground, and they are wet with mud, Wideacre mud, and with blood from a hundred cuts from the sharp chalk and flint stones. I am stumbling in midnight darkness through the woods near our house towards the river, the River Fenny, and I can hear the roar of its winter"deep waters, louder even than the howling and

tossing of the wind in the treetops. It is too dark for me to see my way and I stumble in the blackness between the shattering blasts of lightning.

I could walk easier but for my burden. The only warm dry part about me is the little bundle of a new"born baby which I amholding tight to my heart under my cape. I know that this baby is my responsibility. She is mine. She belongs to me; and yet I must destroy her. Continue reading

THE TOWER OF LONDON, MAY 1465

My Lady Mother goes first, a great heiress in her own right, and the wife of the greatest subject in the kingdom. Isabel follows, because she is the oldest. Then me: I come last, I always come last. I can't see much as we walk into the great throne room of the Tower of London, and my mother leads my sister to curtsey to the throne and steps aside. Isabel sinks down low, as

we have been taught, for a king is a king even if he is a young man put on the throne by my father. His wife will be crowned queen, whatever we may think of her. Then as I step forwards to make my curtsey I get my first good view of the woman that we have come to court to honour.

She is breathtaking: the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. At once I understand why the king stopped his army at the first sight of her, and married

her within weeks. She has a smile that grows slowly and then shines, like an angel's smile. I have seen statues that would look stodgy beside her, I have seen painted Madonnas whose features would be coarse beside her pale luminous loveliness. I rise up from my curtsey to stare at her as if she were an exquisite icon; I cannot look away. Under my scrutiny her face warms, she blushes, she smiles at me, and I cannot help but beam in reply. Continue reading

LONDON, 29 NOVEMBER 1499

In the moment of waking I am innocent, my conscience clear of anywrongdoing. In that first dazed moment, as my eyes open, I have no thoughts; I am only a smooth"skinned, tightly muscled young body, a woman of twentysix, slowly waking with joy to life. I have no sense of my immortal soul, I have no sense of sin or guilt. I am so deliciously, lazily sleepy that I hardly know who I am.

Slowly, I open my eyes and realize that the light coming through the shutters means that it is late in the morning. As I stretch out, luxuriously, like a waking cat, I remember that I was exhausted when I fell asleep and now I feel rested and well. And then, all in a moment, as if reality had suddenly tumbled down on my head like glossy"sealeddenouncements from a high shelf, I remember that I am not well, that nothing is well, that this is the morning I hoped would

never come; for this morning I cannot deny my deadly name: I am the heir of royal blood, and my brother—guilty as I am guilty—is dead.

My husband, sitting on the side of my bed, is fully dressed in his red velvetwaistcoat, his jacket making him bulky and wide, his gold chain of office as chamberlain to the Prince of Wales splayed over his broad chest. Continue reading

CASTLE OF BEAUREVOIR, NEAR ARRAS,
FRANCE, SUMMER–WINTER 1430

She sits, this odd trophy of war, as neat as an obedient child, on a small stool in the corner of her cell. At her feet are the remains of her dinner on a pewter platter, laid on the straw. I notice that my uncle has sent good slices of meat, and even the white bread from his own table;

but she has eaten little. I find I am staring at her, from her boy's riding boots to the man's bonnet crammed on her brown cropped hair, as if she were some exotic animal, trapped for our amusement, as if someone had sent a lion cub all the way from Ethiopia to entertain the great family of Luxembourg, for us to keep in our collection. A lady behind me crosses herself and whispers, "Is this a witch?

I don't know. How does one ever know?

"This is ridiculous,' my great" aunt says boldly.

"Who has ordered the poor girl to be chained? Open the door at once.'

There is a confused muttering of men trying to shift the responsibility, and then someone turns the big key in the cell door Continue reading

Every woman should marry for her own advantage since her husband will represent her, as visible as her front door, for the rest of his life. If she chooses a wastrel she will be avoided by all her neighbors as a poor woman; catch a duke and she will be Your Grace, and everyone will be her friend. She can be pious, she can be learned, she can be witty and wise and beautiful, but if she is married to a fool she will be "that poor Mrs. Fool" until the day he dies.

And I have good reason to respect my own opinion in the matter of husbands having had three of them, and each one, God bless him, served as stepping stone to the next until I got my fourth, my earl, and I am now "my lady Countess of Shrewsbury": a rise greater than that of any woman I know. I am where I am today by making the most of myself, and getting the best price for what I

could bring to market. I am a self"made woman — self"made, selfpolished, and self"sold — and proud of it.

Indeed, no woman in England has done better than me. For though we have a queen on the throne, she is only there by the skill of her mother, and the feebleness of her father's other stock, and not through any great gifts of her own. Continue reading

The girl, giggling and overexcited, was running in the sunlit garden, running away from her stepfather, but not so fast that he could not catch her. Her stepmother, seated in an arbor with Rosamund roses in bud all around her, caught sight of the fourteen"year"old girl and the handsome man chasing around the broad tree trunks on the smooth turf and smiled, determined to see only the best in both of them: the girl she was bringing up and the man she had

adored for years.

He snatched at the hem of the girl's swinging gown and caught her up to him for a moment. "A forfeit!" he said, his dark face close to her flushed cheeks.

They both knew what the forfeit would be. Like quicksilver she slid from his grasp and dodged away, to the far side of an ornamental fountain with a broad circular bowl. Fat carp were swimming slowly in the water;

Elizabeth's excited face was reflected in the surface as she leaned forward to taunt him.

"Can't catch me!"

"'Course I can."

She leaned low so that he could see her small breasts at the top of the square"cut green gown. She felt his eyes on her and the color in her cheeks deepened. He watched, amused and aroused, as her neck flushed rosy pink. Continue reading