VIII

Praise for VIII:
     
    “Great stuff. I loved reading books like this when I was younger. A modern take on historical fiction. Exciting, fascinating and surprisingly scary.” Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series, The Enemy and The Dead
     
    “H. M. Castor brings the dark and dangerous world of the Tudors to bloody life. In a story which grips from beginning to end, Castor casts the familiar figure of Henry VIII in a fascinating new light. In H. M. Castor, teenage fiction has found its Philippa Gregory or C. J. Sansom.”
Celia Rees, author of Witch Child and The Fool’s Girl
     
    “I wish this book had been around when I was learning about the Tudors! Tightly written and faithful to history, H. M. Castor brings Henry VIII to life by giving us a fascinating glimpse into his innermost thoughts and fears. You’ll be hooked from the very first line by one of the most gripping opening scenes I have ever read.”
Katherine Roberts, author of Song Quest , winner of the Branford Boase Award, and I Am the Great Horse
     
    “H. M. Castor really brings Henry VIII to life… The Tudor court simply hums with conspiracy and rumour alongside the music, poetry and jousting.”
Mary Hoffman, author of David and the Stravaganza series

     
    “In VIII the familiar story of a much-married king is seen from a new angle. Told from the unique perspective of Henry himself, it reveals the emotional turmoil that influenced his responses. A great read.”
Barbara Mitchelhill, author of Run Rabbit Run
     
    “… a cracking yarn well told.”
Newbooks Magazine
     
    “A child of extraordinary sensitivity grows up among the restless ghosts of his family’s violent past. With the death of his brother, young Henry Tudor is elevated from isolated ‘spare’ to heir and then king – but his soul is already contaminated by years of abuse and contempt. He can never forget his alternate destiny. Castor creates a chilling depiction of a man of weasel-supple conscience… So well has Castor constructed her psychological portrait that she is able to deliver a truly moving and surprising end to a story we all thought we knew.”
Michelle Lovric, author of The Book of Human Skin and The Undrowned Child

 
     

For Richard
     

 

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
     

PART ONE:
To the Dark Tower
     
     
     

 
♦  ♦  ♦  I   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    I’m still half asleep when I feel strong hands grabbing me.
    I try to kick but it seems like I’m twisted up in the bedclothes, and the next minute I’ve been swung up into the air and whoever’s carrying me is walking fast and I’m going bump bump bump against his chest.
    He smells of beer and horses and sweat. And my cheek is rammed against cold metal – a breastplate – so I know he’s a soldier.
    He must be one of the rebels. Only I didn’t think the rebels were soldiers. I thought they were a mob of stinking peasants from Cornwall, with butcher’s knives and farm tools for weapons.
    “Let go of me! Let—”
    The man changes his grip; a glove clamps across my mouth. It reeks. “Woah! Don’t struggle, sir. You’re quite safe.”
    The words are a trick, of course; I know I am about to die. The rebels have come for me because I am the king’s son and they want to kill me and my brother and my father. So that someone else can be king.
    “Hnnff dnnf yff!”
    “Your mother’s orders, sir.”
    “Lhhfffh!”
    “No, I’m not a liar, sir, and you need to stop kicking. Little shit! Pardon my French, sir, but your teeth aren’t half sharp.”
    In the struggle, the blanket I’m wrapped in has been pushed back from my head. The soldier’s holding me across his body, facing outwards now, one of his arms clamped round my hips, the other under my shoulders, with the hand curled up over my mouth, pressing harder than before. My feet are free to kick, but they’re making contact with nothing but tapestries or – painfully – walls and doors and pillars.
    At least, in breaks from the struggling, I can see where we’re going. I’m at The Coldharbour – my grandmother’s London house – and the soldier is carrying me down the front staircase, the grand one. It’s dark in the house, but the big window we pass glows softly blue – it must be nearly dawn. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, I see orange torchlight spilling out of the door to the great hall, winking off and on as