Robert thought little of this. By this point, he was thirty-three years old and quite resigned to going wherever his lord went.
Upon arriving at Kenninghall, Robert found out that he was to live inside the manor, as head of the household guard. This appointment honored him. He was placed in charge of the watch, arranging schedules and making certain his instructions were maintained.
He sometimes worried about missing the traveling and the fighting, but perhaps it would not be so bad to oversee the Kenninghall watch. His lord had a young son who would soon need training, and there seemed to be plenty to keep a man like Robert occupied.
There was only one problem.
His lord and lady hated each other.
Whereas Robert had barely noticed his lady before, he was now faced with her on a daily basis. Nearing her late twenties, Elizabeth was tall, slender to the point of being spindly, with dark hair and a widow’s peak. She dressed carefully, paying attention to each detail down to her earrings matching her gown, but Lord Thomas somehow always managed to find fault, criticizing her in front of the servants, humiliating her whenever he could.
Robert found his lord’s actions base. . . . Worse, he found them common.
Thomas was fifty-one, with a narrow face and a nose so long it seemed to stretch from above his eyes to the top lip of his mouth. His brown hair was thinning, but he, too, dressed carefully, often wearing his robes of state at home.
He had never spent much time around his wife, Elizabeth, and now one of his main pleasures seemed to be verbally torturing her.
One night, she walked into the dining hall wearing a forest green gown with a matching headpiece, Spanish in design, as was the current fashion. They had six guests for dinner that evening.
“Good God,” Thomas said. “You look like a brown scarecrow. If you’re going to wear that color, the least you could do is cover your face in powder.”
Elizabeth froze in her tracks. Several guests tittered. Several glanced away in embarrassment.
Robert tried not to wince as he stood near the door. He was ashamed of his lord. A man of honor did not humiliate his wife.
Yet as uncomfortable as he found the situation, Robert never imagined it could get worse.
He was wrong.
Although Thomas Howard did not particularly like women, he found many of them enticing, and as far as he was concerned, the lower class the better for his appetites. In addition, he was hardly discreet, and Robert began growing more unsettled by his lord’s behavior.
One of the household women was of particular concern. Her name was Bess Holland, and she was Lady Elizabeth’s washing woman. She was small and buxom with a mass of reddish curls and green eyes. She had a way of walking, while carrying a basket on her hip, that could cause an uproar among Robert’s own men, and she was well aware of it. Had he been the steward in charge of the household servants, he would have dismissed her.
Unfortunately, he was not the steward.
Soon, it was clear that his lord was sporting with Bess behind closed doors as often as possible. They didn’t even try to be quiet.
Again, Robert winced, but he said nothing. It was not his concern.
On the battlefield, his lord was magnificent. As a husband and father, he was lacking.
Robert chastised himself for such thoughts and vowed to remain loyal.
But when an old friend who served Thomas Boleyn stopped by on an errand one day, Robert almost asked him about possible openings among their house guard.
This got him thinking on travel and battles again, wondering if he should offer his services elsewhere. He was beginning to despise his lord and pity his lady.
The problem with Elizabeth was that she allowed Thomas to hurt her. Robert could see this in her eyes. If only she had ignored his barbs, let them vanish in the air, and pretended he had never spoken, he might have eventually relented. But she kept on trying to improve herself to keep him quiet. She flinched visibly at his cutting words, and yet she kept on trying to please him. That was her mistake. She had no other way to fight back, as he held all the power. Robert longed to tell her that the secret to fighting him was through complete and absolute disregard.
But of course he said nothing.
Then, one night, he was making his house rounds, and he heard screaming upstairs. He flew forward,