Christopher Marlowe – English playwright and spy killed in a tavern brawl.
Jamss IV of Scotland – First husband of Margaret Tudor.
Suleiman the Magnificent – Turkish Emperor.
Thomas Wolsey – Son of an Ipswich butcher, he went to Oxford and embarked upon a brilliant career. He became Cardinal, Archbishop and First Minister of Henry VIII.
Mary, Queen of Scots – Granddaughter of Margaret Tudor and mother of James I of England and Scotland.
Darnley – Husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Bothwell – Lover of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Thomas More – Humanist, scholar. Minister of Henry VIII, later executed for opposing Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
Edward VI – Son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, a sickly boy who died young.
The Earl of Surrey – One of the Howard clan. He fought for Richard III, was pardoned and proved to be Henry VIII’s most capable general.
Prologue
Murder raps on my door every night. When the sky is dark and a hunter's moon hides behind the clouds, Murder sweeps up to this great manor house to kill my sleep and plunder my dreams with ghosts spat out by Hell and images of bloody and horrible death. Oh, yes, I hear them coming in the darkness outside as the wind rises to moan through the trees. I hear the clip-clop of spectral hooves on the pebble-strewn path in front of the manor door. I lie awake waiting for them and, at the first ghostly moon, I rise and stare through the mullioned glass at men and women from my past whose souls have long since slipped into the darkness of eternity.
They gather under my window like some ghastly chorus, grey shapes still displaying horrible wounds; the hideous faces of those I have worked with, played with, wenched with, dined with – as well as those I have killed. (May I say, always in fair fight.) The moon slips between the clouds and bathes their blue-white faces in a silver light.