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No Will But His
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Excerpt from
by
Sarah A. Hoyt
The Backstairs of Hampton Court
I
II
III
“Are you brave or foolish, your majesty?
Brave or foolish?” Thomas Culpepper’s fine, long fingers quested beneath the
bodice of my dress, caressing along the rounded slope of my breast till they
found the nipple and played upon it as a musician upon a virginals. His blue
grey eyes sparkled like a cloudless summer’s sky down at me as he demanded, his
voice thickened by desire, “Brave or foolish?”
I smiled at him, but I said nothing. It has
ever been my belief with men that it is far easier to allow them to make their
own minds and tell themselves whatever pretty story they want about your
motives.
They can think you love them or hate them,
that you’re broken-hearted at leaving them or else that you have turned your
heart to another. There is naught you can do about their fanciful imaginings,
and it saves time and many tears if you simply let them believe as they will.
Then they tell themselves their pretty stories and your soul remains unstained
by the lie.
As I looked at Master Culpepper from beneath
my half-lowered eyelids, I thought it was a good thing he had auburn hair and
those fine eyes, and that his features – I thought – resembled what my husband’s
had been before he’d grown so fat. Any get of Thomas could pass as the get of
Henry, the king of England.
“Don’t you know, Madam, that the wrath of
kings is death?”
I smiled at him, my sauciest smile, and
endeavored to appear light-hearted and fanciful and interested in nothing but
my pleasure. Or perhaps half-mad in love with him, which Thomas would probably
fain believe I was. He’d grown very vain.
“You speak too much, Master Culpepper.”
“Should one not speak?” he asked. “When such
grave matter is afoot?” His hand, more forward than his brain, quested still
in the warm reaches of my bodice, and by that questing hand I knew I had him.
He might think, and he might talk, but his body would no more let him walk away
from me than it would let him ascend to flight like an angel bound for heaven
above.
“My quarters are warm, and all my servants
abed, save only Lady Rochefort and Mistress Tilney who is utterly devoted to me
– and both of them would die before they betray me.”
In his eyes for a moment there was a flash of
fear. Then it was gone. “Madam!” he said, desire in his voice, strong enough
to drive away any fear. “Madam.”
“Dare you not, Thomas Culpepper? And I
thought you a brave man.” Which by all accounts I should well think him – in
the field of joust and in dispute, he stood with the most gallant courtiers.
“Brave I am, and I’ll dare if you will, but...”
My finger rested on his lips, stilling them. “Hush
then, and dare you all.”
In his eyes I read lust mixed with a little
fear. He would never be allowed to see the fear in mine. I kept my gaze
level, my smile broad. He would never be allowed to know that as I stood here,
in my velvet gown, my sparkling jewels, I walked a narrow path between two deep
abysses.
The King, my husband, lay ill abed. At this
very moment, already, he might be dead, taken by the same illness that had
caused the wound in his leg to stop flowing and turned his face black with foul
humors just two months ago. That same illness had returned, that same blocked
humor. And now he would die. And if he died –
If he died he left nothing. Two daughters and
a small son who, though he might be a lusty infant, would still be a pawn of
every pretender, every hand against him.
We would find ourselves again as in the time
before the King’s father when my grandmother said every man had been against
every other and no one safe. And I, the relict of the sovereign, would be the
first to lose life and limb in such a strife.
Only one thing would protect me, and hold me
on the throne, and that was that my womb should ripen with a child. But that
was impossible as my husband did little that could lead to such an auspicious
result.
And so, at this moment, in my peril, I must
seize upon another who might impregnate me, and whose son I could pretend to be
Henry’s. Of course, discovery of my treason would lead to death, but so would
Henry’s death without having seeded my womb.
I half-closed my eyes and wondered how I – who
had wanted nothing more than to keep myself free from any man’s single, brute
power over me – should have come to this.
But I said nothing. I closed my eyes, and
allowed Thomas to think it was just my desire for him making me hoarse, as I
said, “Speak no more, Thomas. Only make me yours.”
Top
The Rose In The Bud
“So this be your get, Edmund Howard!” the
old lady said, and the way she said it, made it clear she disapproved.
She looked very great and more important than
anyone Kathryn had yet seen – tall and well arrayed in shining satin and
splendorous brocade. Her face set in a mask of disapproval as -- her back very
straight, her eyes hard – she walked down the line of Kathryn siblings and
looked them over with the kind of speculative glance Kathryn had seen the
Howard housekeeper give a side of beef in the market or a row of ill-plucked chickens.
Her eye ran over Kathryn’s brother Charles, just
fourteen and looking very much like someone had taken an end of him and
stretched him up, without making sure that his limbs and form should match his
new, greatly increased height.
Like all of Edmund Howard’s children, he had been
dressed in new clothes, or at least as new as their father’s diminished fortune
could command. The hose were somewhat faded, but they matched the doublet,
which was a new and brilliant shade resembling orange peel. Even then Kathryn
thought that it was a right pity that Charles’ hair, too, should match the
doublet and, as he blushed under the old lady’s look, so should his face, which
became right ruddy under a smattering of freckles.
“Umm...” the lady said and passed on. Her
walking stick tapped the ground in rhythm, as though she were keeping pace with
her thoughts. Tap, tap, tap. And she stopped in front of Kathryn’s brother
Harry. He was, like Charles, ruddy and redheaded, but the hand of God had as
yet to take hold of him and stretch him to a man’s height with a boy’s frame.
Instead, he was almost as short as Kathryn and twice and round, the freckles on
his face making it look like an apple that has got speckled from waiting too
long in the cold cellar.
The stick stopped tapping the ground for a bare
moment, then resumed its tapping again. Tap, tap, tap, tap it went, as the
lady said, over her shoulder in the direction of the bowing and cringing
Edmund. “That will never do, Edmund. You’ll never raise him. He’s too fat to
be healthy and too ruddy to be gentle.”
Kathryn didn’t hear what her father muttered, but
it had that tone of cringing apology that she remembered from when Mother was
alive, when she used to ask him what he had done with this or that money that
she’d entrusted to him. Father among men was one thing – wise and reserved,
the hero of Flodden Field. But Father with female relatives...
The lady didn’t pay any attention to him, in
anywise, but tapped her way to stand in front of Kathryn’s brother George.
George did not have the carroty hair that had, mayhap, come from the
Culpeppers, the family of Kathryn’s mother. Instead, his hair was a dark
auburn, like Kathryn’s, and his eyes, like hers, broad spaced and dark.
He was a year older than Kathryn and she
remembered that their last step-mother had accounted him a right proper and
pretty child, and petted him much and made much of him, even though she had
brought eight children of her own onto her marriage with Kathryn’s father.
Kathryn had been jealous of him, then. Since her mother had died no one made
much of her. But Kathryn’s nurse had told her envy was a sin and that if she
persisted, the devil would come and take Kathryn entire to Hell and leave only
a little burnt mark after.
Now it seemed as though this old lady they’d come
to visit was also thinking how pretty George was and considering making much of
him. Kathryn stood only a little away from him, with her sister Mary in
between, and tried not to look around Mary – who was fifteen – to see the
expression on the lady’s face. She felt that if the lady said George was the
most beautiful child she’d ever seen Kathryn would likely burst, like an
unseasoned log thrown onto a hot fire. Not because she wanted the grand lady’s
attention, but because the favorite of the family was always George, or else
one of the other boys, or else yet Mary who was pretty and marriageable. For
all the attention anyone ever paid her, Kathryn might as well have been as
clear as water, or as immaterial as air.
“Um,” the lady said. And that um
contained quite a different consideration than the one she’d given Charles.
Her stick tapped the floor, tap, tap, tap, but she did not move, as though she
were involved in some great consideration.
For a while silence reigned, and then her voice
rang out, clear and sudden, like the thunder clap from the clear sky. “Look
up, boy,” she said. “Look at me.”
And on the heels of that, she made a sound, not
quite a laugh, and not full disgust, but something between. “Edmund!” she
said, her voice still cracking. “What manner of coward have you bred?”
This time Kathryn dared look around Mary’s
skirt. She didn’t fully need to, because she could smell the acrid odor of
urine thick in the air, and sure enough, the front of George’s hose, and down
his leg, there was a wet mark and a puddle forming beside his slipper.
Again Kathryn’s father tried to say something,
but the lady paid no more attention to him than she did to George, left
standing there in his wet hose. Kathryn heard George sniffle and guessed that
shortly he would start to cry, but she was more worried about the lady who now
stood close enough to Kathryn for the little Howard daughter to discern the
fine lace ornamenting her expensive clothes and to smell the wondrous rich
perfume of her garments.
Mary curtsied deep, in the way she’d been taught,
and the lady snorted, looking her up and down. At fifteen, Mary, like Charles,
had grown. Unlike Charles, nature had seen fit to fill in her outlines to
those of a woman, widening in chest and swelling in hip, but with long legs and
a fine, pleasant face. She, of all the children of Edmund Howard, had black
hair, with just a little bit of a curl to it, and looked, to her younger sister’s
eyes, like a full grown woman and just what Kathryn wanted to be, particularly
as today she wore a fine velvet kirtle and bodice, with bright peach-colored
sleeves of silk, with many bright ribbons hanging from them.
Kathryn thought for certain that the lady would
be impressed by Mary, as she hadn’t been by any of the others, but she didn’t
seem so. She responded to Mary’s courtesy by raising eyebrows that, this
close, looked to be almost non-existent, and by turning over her shoulder to
look at Kathryn’s father. “This is your get, Edmund?”
Edmund Howard mumbled. Kathryn could get from
his voice nothing but the words “not sure” and the words “believe so” as well
as “Leigh.” Leigh was the name of her older brothers and sisters, the children
of Kathryn’s mother’s first marriage, before she’d married Father.
The lady snorted. “Just like a fool,” she said.
“To buy the house without first making sure it was untenanted.” And she walked
past Mary and stood now in front of Kathryn.
Kathryn stood straight, determined not to cringe
and not to slouch and not to wet herself, like George. That morning, when she’d
seen the little girl attired in her new clothes – a fine bonnet of satin and a
gown of sarsanet, better and newer than anything Kathryn had worn since her
mother died – Dame Margaret, Father’s new wife, had told Kathryn to be good and
behave like a grown maiden and not a child while they visited with the duchess
and that if she did not disgrace herself she would give her strawberries. She
would not to disgrace herself.
Instead, she kept her eyes on the floor, which
was a yellow mosaic, and felt the blaze from the great fireplace to her right.
Though outside it was warm spring, a sort of damp chill clung to the room so
that, with the proximity of the fire, her right side baked while her left
froze. And she looked at the floor and expected the stick to start tapping
again at any moment, as the lady gave some opinion of Kathryn and moved on.
Instead, a hand like a great claw came to take
hold of Kathryn’s small, pointy chin and pull it up. It felt dry as paper and
as tough against the little girl’s skin, but its grasp was like iron. It
tilted Kathryn’s face up to look into the face of the old lady. Her nose was
just a little hooked, just like the nose of Father’s new wife, and her eyes
were dark grey and keen, giving the impression of seeing right through people.
“What is your name, chit?” she asked.
“Kathryn, Madam,” Kathryn said, her voice coming
out all shy and in a piping, sounding much younger than she was, much younger
than she liked to sound. And then because she remembered her remarks about
Mary, “Kathryn Howard, Madam.”
A dry chuckle answered me. “Aye, Kathryn Howard
indeed,” she said. And then turning to her father, “How old is she, Edmund?”
“Ten,” Her father said, in a tone of great
assurance. Then cleared his throat and hesitated. “Or maybe eleven.” There
was a short pause. “She might be twelve at that. You see, I was away from my
family so much, because of debtors laying wait for me at the home of my wife
and children that I – ”
“That you have no idea how old your children are,”
the lady said. And snorted. “Ten is full young to go in service, Edmund.”
“I am sure she’s not that young,” he said. “And
she is sharp, is Kathryn. Anything whatsoever that you teach her she can learn
and in no time at all. Bright and capable is Kathryn and--”
“A grace she must get from her mother,” the lady
said, cutting whatever else Kathryn’s father might have wished to say in the
girl’s favor.
Kathryn’s mind was turning on the words into
service, very much at doubt of what they meant. They had servants, of
course. More when her mother was alive or when her father’s last wife, Dame
Dorothy had been alive, because their money sustained – her father said – more
people to attend them. But even on Father’s money and before he married Dame
Margaret, they had attendants. People who cooked and tended to their clothes
and emptied the slops. Was Kathryn, then, to be one of these? Every sense
revolted.
The servants at the Howard home were village boys
and girls, whose fathers were farmers or servants themselves. And if there was
a thing she knew, and knew well from her childhood – many times repeated to her
by her late mother – it was that her name was Howard, and she was the
granddaughter of a duke.
The lady stepped back once, twice, regarding
Kathryn from beneath her almost-not-there eyebrows, and Edmund Howard cleared
his throat. “Only one of them you must take, Madam, if you please, because
though Anne has got me the post of comptroller at Calais, it is not enough for
a man of my birth to keep himself and all my children, and I–”
“And you have not been granted full access to
your new wife’s fortune, she being no fool,” the lady said and snorted. “Very
well. I will take one of your sorry brood.”
She looked away from Kathryn and towards the
beginning of the line and Charles again, and Kathryn could hear her stick go
tap tap tap tap tap on the floor as she considered each of the Howard siblings
in turn. Charles – tap – Henry – tap – George – taptap in annoyance, followed
by a loud sniffle from the despised boy – and Mary, whose renewed curtsy only
earned her a taptaptap. And then to Kathryn. And her stick stopped.
A great sigh escaped her lips, as if she’d done
all to keep it still, but it would not do. “Oh, very well,” she said at last.
“She looks not the fool nor the wanton, and the thing about too little age is
that you grow out of it. I will take Kathryn.”
Kathryn almost yelped then. What could the lady
mean by taking her? But then she remembered that her new step-mother, Dame
Margaret, had promised her strawberries and she stayed still. Her father had
come to her side, standing between her and the great fireplace, which meant
that his back must be roasting. He lay his warm hand upon her shoulder. “What
an honor, Kathryn. Curtsey and thank the Duchess!”
Kathryn curtseyed automatically, and heard her
voice pipe up, “I thank you, your Grace, most heartily.”
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, even as she
looked towards a distant side of the room and said, “Tell them to fetch me Mary
Tilney, and quickly.”
Kathryn’s father pulled her aside and towards the
fireplace, and there, a little apart from the others, and from the lady who had
walked away to sit upon a chair a little way off and survey her family with
renewed distaste, he whispered, “Mind your manners, Kathryn. Remember to obey
God above all else, and the Duchess as you would God, and all will be well.”
Kathryn felt her hands clench into fists. “But
the strawberries–” she said.
“Heh?” her father said.
And at that moment a girl maybe Mary’s age came
in and curtseyed to the old lady, who told her, “Take my granddaughter,
Kathryn, and show her to the maids hall, and put her in the way of being
useful. She may share your bed.”
More quickly than Kathryn could think, the girl
had her by the hand and was pulling her along.
Kathryn never saw her father again. And she
never did get the promised strawberries.
Top
Down the hallway, up a flight of stairs, into a
long, spacious hall floored in yellow and black tiles, Mary Tilney turned
around, half-dancing as she did. “Kathryn!” she said. “Thou joinest us just
in time to go to London for your cousin’s coronation.” She giggled a little as
she skipped backwards, nimbly. “Is that not grand? What luck. Perhaps, being
Queen Anne’s cousin thou wilt be able to get nearer the pageant or even–” she
looked at Kathryn, a spark of curiosity in her eyes. “Maybe be in the pageant
yourself?”
Kathryn had no idea what Mary spoke of. She
followed haltingly, frowning. She’d heard there was a new Queen – or at least
she thought that was what the adult conversation around her tended to. Not
that anyone explained too clearly, but everyone spoke of Queen Anne and the old
Queen Catherine. Kathryn had always felt a little sad for Queen Catherine,
because they shared a name. But everyone around her seemed happy by Queen Anne’s
rise, and she assumed they knew best.
But the truth was that none of this had mattered
much to Kathryn. Kings and queens and the court had seemed a very distant
thing. More important was moving with Father from lodging to less expensive
lodging, until Father had married Dame Margaret and they had moved to her
house. Shortly after that – perhaps at the same time – Father had been named
comptroller of the King’s port of Calais and then Dame Margaret had got them
clothes and sent them to see the Duchess and told Kathryn she was to behave and
she would have strawberries.
In Kathryn’s mind, it all muddled: The new Queen
and the change in her family circumstances; her father’s new job and this
seeming-disastrous leaving her behind among strangers. Her hands closed on the
stuff of her skirt, which felt much too fine and unaccustomed, and made her let
go in one startled movement. “My... cousin?”
“Lor!” Mary Tilney had turned away, but now
turned back laughing, as they climbed stairs and entered yet another corridor,
the beams overhead painted in blue and gold. “You mean you don’t know!”
“Queen Catherine?” Kathryn asked.
Mary laughed. “Fancy you not knowing.” She had
a beauty mark on the corner of her mouth that waggled up and down with
suppressed laughter, before she covered her mouth with her dainty hand. “Why!
Queen Anne, of course! Her mother was a Howard, who married Thomas Boleyn.”
This idea so overwhelmed Kathryn that she kept
quiet as they ran past open doors showing rooms decorated in a style that
Kathryn had never seen, not even dreamed of. There had been so many different
houses in her life – starting with her mother’s comfortable but strictly
regulated house, with the nursemaids and the servants and every child – Leigh
and Howard alike – set in a proper schedule and constrained to do the proper
things. Then there had been various houses and rooming houses, after her
mother’s death, then the house of Dame Dorothy, till she died, then rooming
houses again and now, just for a few weeks, there had been the home of her new
step-mother, which was opulent, but perhaps not as comfortable as her mother’s.
But this home was as different from that, as...
as the tavern where they’d stopped for a bite of food on the way was from any
home. This home, so far, had more rooms than any other home she’d ever been
in, and each lavishly, invitingly furnished, with cushions and painted
furniture and...
Kathryn stopped at the open door to a large room,
forgetting to follow Mary. She was conscious, though she did not devote much
thought to it, that Mary had gone ahead – her steps retreating – then come back
– steps approaching again. “Fie, what holds you?” Mary asked.
Kathryn was looking at a bright room with a broad
window in whose embrasure a spacious window seat nestled, covered in many-colored
silk cushions. Disposed around the seats were harpsichord and lutes, polished
and shining. In a corner of the room stood an harp, with a carved wood frame.
Against the other wall, stood the pianoforte in polished walnut.
“Aye, come, Kathryn, what look you on so lost?”
“Is it...” Kathryn asked. “Is this where
musicians come to play?” She couldn’t imagine where the Duchess would sit,
much less anyone else. But in Kathryn’s short life, one enjoyment stood out,
even more than her love of strawberries – and that was her love of music. When
she’d been fortunate enough to listen to a good choir at church, she’d felt as
if she could stay there forever. One of her maids had told her this was all
heaven was – that there was a great choir, singing God’s glory forever. It
made heaven a very desired thing.
Mary laughed, amusement and indulgence in her
laugh. “Ah, no, Kathryn. Sometimes we have musicians who play for her Grace,
but this is where the musicians come to teach us to play.”
“You learn to play?” Kathryn asked with
amazement. Her whole life, though her brothers were given masters, there never
seemed to be quite enough money to pay for little Kathryn’s lessons.
“We all do. And you will too,” Mary said. “We
are, after all, young ladies of quality, and playing well is part of the graces
that will find us a husband or see us through in court.” With a sudden gasp,
Mary added, “You’ll probably go to court, Kathryn, soon enough, to serve your
cousin the Queen.”
But the court and all its wonders were too
distant a thought to Kathryn. Instead, she thought of learning music, and her
heart sped in her chest, till it would seem as though it would break through.
Her house – even when she lived with her mother – had never contained any of
these musical instruments, not even a lute. She didn’t remember ever hearing
her mother sing, so perhaps mother didn’t like music. Or perhaps there was
more to it. Perhaps Mother hadn’t been able to afford a master for so many
girls.
But Kathryn knew her voice was sweet. When she
sang about the house, not even Dame Margaret bid her stop. And the idea of
knowing how to accompany herself, how to make sweet sounds upon all those
interesting instruments, buoyed her along on light feet, as Mary opened a tall
oak door onto a vast room.
The room contained six beds, disposed about its
walls, and it had mullioned windows, set with little squares and leaden
strips. Through the windows cold white light poured, lighting a scene of utter
confusion.
There were dresses and caps tossed about
everywhere, and what seemed like just colorful lengths of fabric thrown over
the beds all around. Most of all, there were girls – more than ten of them,
though Kathryn stopped counting at ten – all of them much older than Kathryn,
talking and laughing and – some of them – sitting upon a bench by the
fireplace, sewing.
In one corner of the room, a girl stood and a
woman who looked much older than them was engaged in ... doing something with
fabric around her. Kathryn thought that the woman was a seamstress trying a
dress on the girl, but only perhaps because she herself had a new dress made
for her so recently.
As all the girls turned to look at her and Mary,
and silence fell in the room. The girl standing with the fabric around her turned
also, to a sharp reproof from the older woman, “Now, Mistress Jane!”
This confirmed that the girl was having a dress
fitted. Mistress Jane was a thin, pinched-face creature, and the velvet
wrapped around her was burgundy and so rich that it made Kathryn stare in
admiration. It seemed sad to waste it on Jane, who would more likely look even
smaller and sourer within it.
Kathryn was thinking this as Mary giggled and
said, “I give you her Grace’s granddaughter, Mistress Kathryn Howard.”
Without thinking, without conscious effort,
Kathryn curtsied.
Like that, the noise resumed, and from the noise,
many words emerged “So little!”“Granddaughter? But I thought her gGace had
only–” “Well, step-granddaughter, then.” “To live with us!” “Well, then, be nice
to her.” “Oh, I will. Cousin to the Queen and many favors in her giving.”
All of these brought peels of laughter, and the
older girls approached, surrounding Kathryn, circling her about, pulling her
chin up to look at her face.
Mary stood aside through all of this, looking
exactly – Kathryn thought – like a puppeteer, who had once come to their house
when her mother was still living. The man had made many dolls dance and fight
upon the stage, and, afterwards, while the room applauded, he’d stayed aside
with a satisfied smile upon his face.
Now there was the like smile on Mary’s face.
That is, until the older woman came from the corner of the room and stood
there, looking at them all with her hands on her hips. “Well,” she said, and
the way she said it, it was a judgment on all of them and perhaps on Kathryn
most of all. “Is she to go to London with us then, on the morrow?”
Mary’s smile disappeared. She frowned, the sort
of frown people gave when they were thinking deeply. “Well, I vow,” she said.
“I did not ask, but I don’t see how not, for no one of quality is staying here,
and surely the Duchess wouldn’t leave her granddaughter to the cleaning
servants and the stable hands.”
The seamstress made a sound that signified as
clearly as if she’d said the words that the Duchess might well do anything and
that this one servant had no high opinion of her mistress. She primmed her
small lips. “I don’t suppose, Mistress Tilney, that Mistress Howard has
brought a trousseau with her, or that you’ve been put in charge of her gowns.”
“Well, no,” Mary said. “I’ve not–”
“Did you bring gowns, Mistress Howard?” the woman
asked.
And because she sounded exactly like Dame
Margaret, Kathryn heard a quiver in her voice as she said, “No, an’ it please
you. This is the only good gown I have, and Dame Margaret had it made, because
she said everything else I have is rags and tatters, not fit for a beggar.”
“Well, an’ it not please me,” the seamstress
said, setting off a round of giggles amid the girls. “And I warrant her Grace
will never give it a thought, but a Howard and the cousin of the Queen cannot
go to the festivities in that way. You, Mistress Bulmer, and you, Mistress
Tilney, and any other of you who have outgrown gowns recently, bring them to
me. I see I shall not sleep tonight.”
Before Kathryn quite knew what was forward, she
was set in the corner of the room where the light from the windows fell
stronger, and the woman was draping her in much too large gowns and marking
alterations with chalk and needle and thread. The other girls gathered around
and watched and made suggestions, even while the seamstress muttered under her
breath about the horrors of such a noble girl being dressed in hand me downs,
and seemed to justify herself to someone invisible by saying that it was
impossible for her to do but as she did.
“Oh, don’t fuss,” one of the girls finally told
the seamstress. “No one will know they’re hand-me-downs, you do the thing so
cleverly.” She looked Kathryn over with bright blue eyes that sparkled with
amusement. “And she looks so well in your confections. She’s a very pretty
child.”
While Kathryn blushed with pleasure, another girl
gave her a sweet. “Here, Kathryn,” she said. And stepped back, and said, with
laughing voice. “You’re very beautiful, Mistress Howard. I vow you’ll get
yourself a great and brilliant match as soon as you’re grown and make us all
insane with jealousy.”
This caused all the girls to laugh.
Kathryn chewed her sweet in confusion, wondering
if they were making fun of her or simply very happy girls. But when Mary
Tilney put a hand on Kathryn’s shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine with us,
Kathryn, we’ll look after you.” She had no reason doubt them.
Top
Kathryn felt as though she were living in a tale
like sometimes gypsies told on the street corner, for a coin or two. Or like
was enacted in inns, or even at church at Christmas, with angels and maidens
dressed all in shimmery fabric, all speaking lines very prettily.
Kathryn had been to London before, but it had
never been like this, or looked like this, and she had to think it must be a
dream. This idea was all the more likely because of the travel in the carriage
from Horsham, with all the girls laughing and singing and eating many good
things. The carriage was soft and inside the seats were comfortable, quite a
long distance from traveling to Horsham with her father, on horseback. Not
that she’d complained of being held in front of him in the saddle, but this was
quite so much better. She’d slept and wakened and slept again and then she’d
entered a magical land.
First there was her Grace’s palace at Lambeth,
across the river from Greenwich Palace. The palace of the King himself.
Her Grace’s home at Lambeth made Horsham look
pedestrian and tiny. And then there was London itself. Kathryn had seen
London before – had been in London before, between cheap house and dilapidated
hostelry, but she had never seen London like this. The city, entire, was
transformed as though by the hand of a magical power.
When she’d first arrived was well before the
coronation of that cousin Anne, whom she’d never seen but to whom she’d become
very attached all the same. A queen. My cousin, the Queen.
In her mind, Anne wore gold and jewels, a pretty
crown sparkling upon her head, ermine and furs and all the things Kathryn had
heard about but rarely seen and certainly never owned. Kathryn wanted Anne to
be everything that Kathryn had ever dreamed a queen might be. By now, she’d
heard so much about Anne, whom the King had loved, despairing, for years on
end, that she felt as if she knew her cousin, and if her cousin’s coronation
must be an attainment of her own dream. And the excitement in the city was
scarcely less than her own.
Her Grace’s Lambeth residence sat across the
River Thames from Greenwich Palace. The river itself did not thrill Kathryn,
who had seen it before and known that the water could stink, particularly on a
hot summer day and that the noblemen on barges often held a hollowed out
orange, filled with spices and other scents to protect themselves from the ill
humors of the river.
But even the river seemed milder now. Every day,
from the time Kathryn arrived, new barges appeared on the Thames, all
splendidly decorated, all illuminated at night with luminaries. From these
barges, as the darkness fell, came the sounds of songs and drinking, though
Mary Tilney and her other new friends told Kathryn that wasn’t part of the
coronation pageant, yet. “Just the common folks, who guard the barges,” they
said. “Amusing themselves. Look you, if you think this is grand, you shall
be all astounded when the pageants start.”
They said it and giggled and their eyes
sparkled. Because the excitement within the house matched the excitement
outside. All the girls were judging of the clothes they should wear for the
coronation, dreaming of all the esquires, the knights, even the great Lords who
would be coming to town for the festivities. And now they blushed, and now
they sighed, and they paraded about in their clothes and praised each other’s
looks or suggested perhaps a little change. They braided each other’s hair
and tried coifs and bonnets.
Absent from all this was the Duchess, which
seemed to Kathryn passing strange. “Why come she not?” she asked Mary Tilney
while Mary carefully braided Kathryn’s hair, two days after they arrived to
town. “Care she not how I do? If she’s my grandmother–”
“Hush, girl,” Mary Tilney said. “And do not
move, or your hair shall be all askew.” She tugged gently on Kathryn’s auburn
hair, not enough to truly hurt but enough to make her mind. “Her Grace is busy
with her own preparations, for you must know that she was called to hold up
Queen Anne’s train during her coronation. You can see how important that is,
and how she must make sure she disgraces neither her name nor her family,
neither her dignity nor the Queen’s.”
Kathryn nodded, impressed, and earned another
light hair pull for it. “Be still, or I cannot make you look pretty for the
coronation. Do you not wish to look pretty for the coronation?”
The girl so very much wished it that she lost
herself in a reverie, where it was herself holding the royal train, freighted
with jewels and hemmed with ermine. In her little dream everyone – from the
highest in the land to the lowest – bowed not just to Queen Anne – a shadowy
figure who, in Kathryn’s imagination, looked just like a grown up Kathryn – but
to Kathryn herself, the Queen’s most beloved cousin.
She was awakened from this by one of the girls –
a Dorothy Barwike – somewhat older than the rest, came running into their
chamber, “Why are you here?” she asked, and before either of the girls could
answer. “Oh, mind that not. Make haste, make haste, there’s the Queen’s barge
coming up the river to the tower, and what a sight that is to see.”
“To the Tower?” Kathryn asked, unable to move,
even as Mary Tilney let go of her hair and got up, in a rush. Mary, already
three steps away, turned, even while Kathryn looked up at her. Kathryn knew
she must look pale, for she had felt the blood leave her face, as she stood
there, staring. “But–” Even such as she – and she knew she was a provincial,
with little knowledge of the world – knew that the Tower was where traitors
went and people who had conspired against the King’s majesty.
She remembered her father and mother talking
about someone who had gone to the Tower and then, shortly thereafter, as was
expected, had been beheaded. She looked at Mary, while the pretty tower of
dream she’d built in her head came tumbling to the ground. “What has the Queen
done, to go to the Tower? How did she lose the King’s love?”
For a moment, Mary stared at Kathryn looking
quite blank, and then a grin spread across her oval face. “Oh, Kathryn, you
goose. No, it is not that the King no longer loves the Queen. On the
contrary. It is of his great and reverent love for her that she goes to the
Tower. For she must spend the night there, before her own coronation. Why, he’s
even making sixty knights of the bath, which is only done when a King or Queen
is crowned.”
“Oh,” Kathryn said and, her resistance melting,
allowed herself to be pulled out of the door of their sleeping chambers – which
were much like the ones at Horsham, only with more gilding on the ceiling and
more vibrantly painted walls, and down the hallway, to a room on the opposite
side, facing the river.
The mullioned windows had been thrown open,
allowing the mild May air to flow in, full of the smells of the city – smoke
and animals and people – but also of the scents of wine and roasting meat, of
flowers and perfume.
The river on that night was even more of a
fairyland than before. Instead of the disordered, merry singing there was more
organized music that sounded much like what Kathryn was used to hearing in
church, only perhaps merrier.
She watched, her eyes growing wider, her mind
wondering at how many people were down there, so many – and all to honor one
woman. Well, truth be told, a queen. But queen or not, surely she was flesh
mortal, and one day – however long ago, and Kathryn who was less than clear on
ages would not dare hazard – she’d been just a girl like Kathryn.
Her mouth falling open, as she listened to the
praise of the queen sung by many choirs on the river and watched the torches
and lanterns reflecting upon the water creating as though another realm of
light down there, she said, “I did not even know that I was cousin to kings and
queens.”
This got her an odd look from Mary Tilney who
had, unaccountably, got bored with watching the aquatic procession and was
fidgeting with the strings of a lute, picked up who knew where – perhaps trying
to duplicate one of the tunes being sung down below. “What mean you,
Kathryn? Doubt you that you’re related to Queen Anne? Her mother was a Howard
and so, Mistress Howard, are you!”
“Oh,” Kathryn said, feeling as though there were
a reproof behind the words. “An’ I didn’t mean that. I meant Queen Anne’s
parents. Force, her mother might be a Howard, but her father must have been
some great personage, the ruler of some kingdom.”
This made Mary titter, and her titter was echoed
by one or two of the ladies who stood by. “Hear you that?” Mary Tilney said. “Thomas
Boleyn a king...”
“King of the merchants of London,” another girl
said.
“But...” Kathryn had never learned much of
history – or indeed of anything formal that people might be taught. She was
not a slow girl but she had realized, from living as she did with these other
ladies, that other women got an education quite different from hers. Why, even
her Leigh sisters had masters hired for them, and were sent away, when much
younger than Kathryn, to learn deportment and other accomplishments, from some
great house. But there never had been any money for masters for Kathryn.
She had learned her letters from her mother, and
was easier reading than writing. Writing and the forming of letters had never
been enforced, so she wrote in the sprawling childish hand that she’d first
tried upon the paper. And, too, she found when she tried to write, every word
deserted her, so that her language came out ill-formed and twisted, more
concerned with how she’d form the letters than with what she was trying to say.
As such she had not learned much, but she had
read the few books available at her mother’s house, and then at her first
step-mother’s house. Most of them were lists of peerage, or else long stories
of someone or other who had gone to war.
However, with all that, of one thing Kathryn was
sure. Kings married queens, not just anyone that they found wandering about
their palace, save only, mayhap – and she was not sure on this, but thought it
only happened in fantastical stories – what her nurse had told her about a king
who had found a naked maiden sitting on a branch in the forest and married
her. But this was not in the peerage books, and Kathryn thought it might be a
lie. So kings married women who were already princesses, themselves, the
daughters of kings. In fact, she remembered when people spoke of Queen
Catherine that they said she was the daughter of the Spanish king.
So how was it possible that Queen Anne should be
her cousin on her mother’s side, and yet her father not a king?
“She was just a maid of honor to the Queen,” Mary
Tilney said. “The daughter of a gentleman, like the rest of us, perhaps lower
born than you, Kathryn Howard, for her father does have merchant blood.”
“But how did she then become the queen?” Kathryn
asked.
“Ah, that, little one, is because she captured
the King’s mind and heart that nothing would do for him but to marry her.
Remember we told you how she caused him to love her, and write her poems! Why,
he even said that she has a soul worthy of a crown.”
One of the girls said something that sounded to
Kathryn’s ears like “Faith, it’s not her soul–” but quieted as Mary rounded on
her.
Kathryn didn’t mind. She had become used to the
sometimes coarse jests of these girls who, like her, had come from their homes
to serve the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk in the hopes, if Kathryn well
understood, that they would either learn graces which would enable them to
aspire to a higher post or that they would meet someone who would marry them
and...
Kathryn’s mind stopped on that. Surely they
couldn’t all become Queen. No. Despite the confusion there seemed to be in
the land, with the now divorced Queen Catherine and the newly married Queen
Anne, and those that said Queen Catherine was not divorced and that Queen Anne
was but the King’s concubine, yet she knew well enough that only one person
could be Queen at once.
But that did not mean that all these ladies could
not aspire to very grand marriages. Dukes and Earls, perhaps. And Kathryn,
who was now the cousin of the Queen herself, might even aspire to marry some
foreign prince.
She stayed up late, watching from the window as
the sparkling lights shone and blinked on the river. The others promised her
many delights tomorrow.
Unlike the Duchess, none of them would get near
enough to watch the coronation itself, nor the royal supper or other
festivities, but there were better things for them. “Faith,” they said. “Wine
will flow from fountains, so that it runs down the gutters and every guild in
the town will stage a pageant or a tableau for the queen. Ah, such things you’ll
see!”
And Kathryn, nodding dutifully along with it,
fell asleep. She did not remember being taken to her bed or laying down to
sleep. But the night long she dreamed – and that she remembered – of pageants
and tableaus, of fairies and angels.
And amid all of them there was a grown up Kathryn
– herself, not Queen Anne – who had found a prince who would take her away and
make her Queen of her own land.
In the dream, Kathryn could not see the boy’s
face, save for knowing he was tall and fair, with auburn hair running towards
red, and that he treated her as though she were the most important thing in all
creation.
For a moment she woke up to a great noise, like
thunder, and through her sleepiness was conscious of Mary Tilney telling her
not to be a goose “for it is only the thousand guns being fired in salute at
the Tower.”
Kathryn had fallen again into her dream-prince’s
arms. As he twirled her in a delightful dance, she could see herself as Queen
Kathryn, on a throne, receiving her vassals, and she sighed, impatient at her
youth, longing to be grown up. After all, Kathryn had never been the center of
anyone’s love – not her father’s, not her mother’s, certainly not either
stepmothers’.
How excellent it must be, how wonderful, to be
the center of everyone’s love and have a whole kingdom worship her beauty and
excellence. Faith, she would not even mind if they were foreigners and spoke
an odd language.
In her dream, she felt the crown upon her head,
and it seemed as though it belonged there by right.
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