After he had lost for the third time, Jocelyn exclaimed he craved another diversion and buried himself in the newspaper while Charlie and I continued to play. Suddenly, Jocelyn let out a cry of delight and exclaimed he had found a spiffing way to continue his birthday celebrations. He showed us a large advertisement for the opening of the new Popular Café run by Lyons.
It is in Piccadilly and, from the photograph, looks like a palace of a place, apparently seating over two thousand customers. The music is to be supplied by a band with a new young leader calledVictor Sylvester. It opens on 10 October and we have decided to go along and join in the fun.
13
LONDON – APRIL 1497
Life changes with such swift brutality, thought Elizabeth walking towards the grand solar where her brothers and her mother’s women waited.
Her mother had died two weeks earlier and Elizabeth wondered if she would ever feel whole again. Never would she hear the vivacious laugh of the countess fill a room, nor would Elizabeth feel the warmth of her mother’s embrace or bask in the brightness of her smile. In order to help her father, Elizabeth had slipped into her mother’s role, running the household, a task which the countess had trained her for since she was a child.
Elizabeth glanced out of the window as she passed, the River Thames was a grey scar in the distance, despite being the middle of the day, the sky was as dark as night, weighed down with swollen rain clouds.
Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Surrey, had died on 4 April 1497 after a short illness. Her family and household were in mourning, lost and floundering without their guiding light. The countess’s dying request was to be buried in the nun’s choir of the Convent of the Minoresses of Aldgate. Her will left instructions to distribute her money to the poor of Whitechapeland Hackney. To ensure her wishes were carried out, the family was in London at their townhouse, named The Tower, a title Elizabeth’s father continued to find amusing, despite his own incarceration in the Tower of London.
‘It makes us sound very grand,’ he had said when Elizabeth had asked whether the name might be bad luck, a shadow version of the vast White Tower, the ancient fortress where so much death had occurred.
‘You’re superstitious, Lizzie,’ he had said with a delighted laugh. ‘It is merely an amusing name, nothing more. No doubt, one day, it will be rechristened and our tenure here, with the peculiar name, will be forgotten.’
In recent years, the family had divided its time between the fortress of Sheriff Hutton and the glamorous court in London. As her father’s status had improved, her mother was welcomed into the inner circle of elite women and was offered a position as a lady-in-waiting to the queen, Elizabeth of York. The countess had been honoured to return, especially as she had served the new queen’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, as her Lady of the Bedchamber.
Elizabeth pushed open the door to the grand solar. Once, the room had rung with laughter, now a low hum of tear-strewn conversation buzzed like discontented wasps in the gloomy light. Her younger siblings, John, Charles, Henry and Richard, were in the nursery, but those closest in age to her – Thomas, Edward, Edmund and Muriel – sat white-faced and grieving. Agnes Tilney, her mother’s cousin and a lady-in-waiting to the countess, remained with the household, but Elizabeth’s half-sisters, Anne and Margaret, had left, returning to their own homes. Her half-brother John had done the same, promising to return should Elizabeth or his half-siblings need his assistance. The extended household of gentlemen and ladies remainedseparate from the family – a mark of respect which allowed the Howards time to grieve.
‘Lizzie, my sweet child,’ her father greeted her as she joined him at the fireside. ‘Thank you for taking such good care of us, dealing with the stewards and the household.’
‘It’s my pleasure, Papa,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Mama would expect nothing less.’
‘We shall be poorer for our loss,’ her father said.
‘Poorer?’ queried her elder brother, Thomas.
‘Emotionally,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Papa means our lives are duller, darker, less glamorous since Mama’s death.’
‘She wouldn’t want us to be sad,’ said Agnes, glancing sympathetically at the earl, who gave her a wan smile. ‘The countess was full of life and fun, this is how she would want to be remembered…’
‘Who are you to tell us how we should remember our mother?’ choked Edmund, his voice filled with tears and fury. ‘You were her cousin, not her child. We knew her best.’
Agnes blushed and opened her mouth to defend herself, but Elizabeth stepped in. She put a soothing hand on her younger brother’s arm.
‘Agnes was offering comfort,’ she said to Edmund, who had turned away and was wiping his eyes with rough swipes. ‘She loved Mama too. We all did.’
Elizabeth gazed at her father, imploring him with her eyes to offer solace, but he was incapable. The Howard marriage had been a love match and the earl was bereft.
‘Perhaps we should retire,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Find peace in our own ways.’
‘A good idea, daughter,’ said the earl. ‘I shall be in the mews with the falcons. Would any of you care to join me?’
Elizabeth’s two eldest brothers, Thomas and Edward, nodded and gave murmurs of agreement, rising to join their father. Edmund shook his head.
‘I shall be in my room,’ he said and left, his leather boots echoing on the stone floors as he marched along the corridor towards the quirky tower room that had given the Howards’ London residence its name.
Her father had once told Elizabeth and Edward, ‘When your grandfather, John, was alive during the reign of King Richard, there were many who spread rumours about our sudden rise to the dukedom of Norfolk. There was gossip aplenty about the young boys, the nephews of the king, who had vanished one night, never to be seen again.’
‘Do you refer to King Edward V and Richard of Salisbury, Duke of York?’ Edward had asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ their father had replied. ‘For a while, your grandfather and I were the prime suspects in their disappearance.’
‘It was a mistake, though?’ Elizabeth had said, unnerved by this confession.
