The Execution Dresses

Chapter 1

Right, I've really messed with the Howard children's birth dates. Sorry not sorry.
Henry Howard- 1518
Beatrice Howard- 1523
Mary Howard- 1524.

Prologue 1555
Each time I watched an execution, I wore a new gown. I did not watch many, for my father said they were too macabre a sight for a young maiden such as myself, but on the occasions where he deemed a full turnout of  the Howards necessary, I was bound to go and don a new gown for the occasion.
Father said appearances matter most of anything, and in the times we lived in, I suppose that was right. Each different gown I wore for an execution has had a purpose, a statement to make. The statement that I was a loyal daughter of the Howards, the eldest daughter of  the head of the family, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and that is how I would remain.
My name is Lady Beatrice Howard of Norfolk. I suppose I sound rather strange, penning my name and title into the creamy parchment paper of this red leather book, embossed with the Howard coat of arms. But I must tell you who I am, for it is a fact I have spoke, written and thought many times in my fourteen years of life. My name is distinctive among this court, amongst the Anne's, Jane's and Elizabeth's of this lions den. My father chose it, fourteen years ago, the day I was born, after my mother had turned her head from me and refused to even hold her new daughter.
"It was because of your resemblance to your father, my dear. It hurt her to see it, the face of the man who had caused her so much pain. Bless her, you can't blame her." One of my many aunts once sorrowfully told me.
But I can blame her, I promise, I really can.
My father didn't greet the news of my birth with much excitement either.
"A girl." He grunted. "A bleeding girl. A girl when I needed a spare heir." He held me gingerly in his large rough hands.
"At least she is pretty, Thomas. Better a pretty lass than a homely one, surely." My uncle, Thomas Boleyn, a name that I am sure has graced your hearing before, said to my father.
"Aye. At least she doesn't have my nose." Father has a large beak of a nose, one he thinks wouldn't suit a woman, particularly a pretty fair one like me. "I suppose I'd best give her a name." He looked down at me with slight thoughtfulness. "She can't be Anne, for your girl Anne, Thomas, her position is not certain in the King's favour. I don't want her falling and my daughter serving as an unpleasant reminder. She can be Beatrice. That's a nice, maidenly name." Father decided.
"She will be a credit to the Howards one day." My uncle Boleyn said, raising a glass of crimson wine to my father.
"Amen. Let us hope so." My father said grimly, perhaps thinking of my disobedient mother.

And I am. I am the perfect golden daughter of the Howards. My face is always set in a resolute mask, my hair is always perfectly groomed, my neck is always adorned with a necklace in the shape of a H, set with pearls and rubies.
Six Queens, I have seen sit on the throne. Strict Catalina, the Spanish paragon, with her heavy traditional skirts. Our Anne, my father's Anne, his brightest star, the star he sat and sentanced to death and watched burn to ashes. Plain Jane, pallid and miserable, with her slumped back and unfortunate ending- a painful death in childbirth, one that unfortunately I was present for. But I do not like to think of that now. Then there was the Cleves girl, the second Anne to perch on that cursed Queen's throne, who only served as a miserable memory of her namesake. And then there was Katheryn, another of my father's pretty protégés. Too young, too young to sit on a throne that trickles blood. Parr came last, scholarly and studious, a survivor.
I have watched these six women dance their way in and out of this world. Their dance was always fleeting, and I watched as they grind their feet on the ornate floors in a futile attempt to stay. And now the curtains have closed and our great King, the husband of all these cursed women, Henry VIII, has closed his cruel eyes and dissolved into the  promise of ever-lasting slumber.
I wish to tell their story, the story of six doomed women, and by extension, my own story, and how I survived.
I suppose the only sensible place to start this story is on my arrival at court. Court, this den of wolves, is the start of every story. It was perhaps 1533, and I was ten years old. I often think back now and wonder what possessed my father to summon me to court at such a tender age. But that is not a question I dare voice to my father.
I remember walking into the Howard apartments, the grand rooms I am currently sat in, and seeing my father sat behind his wooden desk, a tankard of ale in-front of him and my tall, lanky, fifteen year old brother Henry.
"My lord father and my lord brother." I said, curtsying prettily as I had always been taught.
"Daughter. You have grown much."
"Eight years will do that to you, my lord." I said quietly, my eyes downturned, but looking up at him through my dark eyelashes.
He snorted briefly. "I am a busy man. I hope you yourself have been busy learning etiquette. That was the purpose of hiring all those tutors, you know."
My brother, Henry, stood leaning against the desk, boredom evident in his rougishly handsome features. Howard features, noble features, as my father would term it.
He yawned. "Father, stop pulling the poor girl apart." Father scowled at him and he immediately fell silent.
"As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, can you read and write in English, French and Latin?" Father continued, his dark eyes boring into me, his eldest daughter. What a curse being the eldest daughter is, do you not think? My entire families rules and expectations shoved down my throat, oozing down onto my heart, smothering it in the regards and regulations of the most noble House of Howard.
"Yes Father." I replied.
Satisfaction became evident in his grim, miserly features. "Let us hope you will become a credit to us. You are my daughter, after all."

And I was. As I was to learn, and you too, my reader, will learn, my father was not a good man. He committed many henious acts throughout his long life, hurt many people, and it ended in his own downfall, but I never abanonded him. He was my father, and he was all I had. I was born to him and I almost died for him.
But that is the lot of a Howard.