My first attempt at writing fiction set in Tudor England was a coming-of-age story about the daughter of an infamous alchemist. The book was set in the year 1542 and included a character who was brutally silenced to prevent his spreading dangerous information that could affect the course of King Henry VIII’s reign.
No matter how many times I reworked the manuscript, I could never find the right balance between the young adult and historical fiction genres. Eventually, I abandoned the concept and went on to cast my main character, Bianca Goddard, as an amateur sixteenth century sleuth. This was the basis for my Bianca Goddard mystery series set in the slums of Tudor London, featuring a varied cast of devious goodwives, thieves, alchemists, merchants, and priests.
However, there was one character whom I left in the rubble even though I adored him. He deserved his own story in which he was the main focus and eventually, I found the way to tell it.
Alison Weirs’ The Six Wives of Henry VIII story of Katherine Howard gave me the kernel of inspiration to insinuate my character into court politics. Katherine’s entire fortune and that of the powerful Howard family came crashing down when a bit of hearsay was surreptitiously delivered to Archbishop Cranmer by a young Protestant courtier named John Lascelles.
Lascelles was a fervent Protestant, a man once loyal to Thomas Cromwell. Lascelles was eager to see the conservative Howards usurped and while the king was on progress with Katherine to the north, Lascelles took advantage of his absence to influence the progressive councilors left behind in London.
Upon encouraging his sister, Mary Hall, to seek service with Queen Katherine, she told Lascelles that she would not for Katherine was ‘of very light behavior.’ She had lived with Katherine in the ladies’ dormitory at the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s house at Lambeth.
When Mary Hall was brought before Archbishop Cranmer and further pressed, she admitted that it was common knowledge that a dalliance existed between Katherine and Henry Manox, the music master. Soon after, she had taken up with Francis Dereham. Such casual morality could be devastating news to Henry, for he was very much enamored of Katherine and believed he had married a virgin.
This tawdry tidbit is overheard by my character, Kronos—a fool in the court, caught hiding in the room where Lascelles and Archbishop Cranmer take conference. Of course, I have taken creative license by placing Kronos in the same room where this meeting occurred, and I have used the scene to set in motion his particular story, weaving his past with the present to explore the power dynamics between two influential families vying for Henry’s favor. But the story is also about a man who is underestimated and stigmatized for his physical encumbrance--dwarfism.
I was inspired by Patrick Page’s brilliant one man play, All the Devils are Here, in which he explores, chronologically, Shakespeare’s villains. Motivation is the impetus for men to commit evil, but what deep-rooted psychological or emotional wounds compel a man to act?
In the sixteenth century assumptions were made about a person based on parentage, class, and physical attributes, to name a few. The complicated motivations of Shakespeare’s Richard III, his grappling with his own physical deformity, provided insight into the mindset of a character forced to live in a society that treats him unjustly based on a factor out of his control. How, then, does one respond?
Fool is the story of a jester in Henry VIII’s court who is brutally silenced to prevent a scandal that could alter the course of history. He manipulates a plan of extortion to exact revenge on those who wronged him making his enemies to reconsider who, exactly, is the fool?
Mary Lawrence
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