by G Lawrence
As I stared at her, my mind blank with shock, Norfolk turned to Agnes, evidently deciding no more needed to be said to me. He certainly was not looking for my consent. “You said there might be an issue with a boy?”
“A foolish summer romance, that is all.” My grandmother fixed her eyes on me, commanding me to be silent. “The boy fell for her, but Catherine sent him away, telling him he was no match for her blood.”
“At least she understands her station,” said Norfolk, as though I was not there.
I was not, to him. I barely mattered. I was simply a means to the end he desired. My mind was whirling. I had thought they would tell me to surrender to the King, perhaps after a time of leading him on so they might gain greater spoils. I had not thought they might intend me to replace the Queen, to become Queen! No thought could be more ridiculous. Catherine Howard, the poor little daughter of a noble wastrel, come to her grandmother’s house in borrowed clothes, always at the bottom of the pile, set upon and used, becoming Queen?
“If this is to work there must be a child, and there have been problems in the royal bed,” said Agnes, continuing to talk to Norfolk as though they were the only ones in the room. “Anne claimed he had neither strength nor power to form a child.”
“Hush, woman. Do you want your head on the hay, like hers?” Norfolk shook his head. “I think there will be small problem. She is ripe. He wants her fruit.”
I felt sick. In all my life, even when men had called me names, I had never felt more a whore than in that moment.
“And if that fails,” Agnes said, “there are things she can feed him… mandrake, or chestnuts in ragwort and sugar. That gets a man breeding.”
“Please,” I said, my voice faint. “You want me to replace the Queen?”
Norfolk gazed on me with a pitying look, but not for what he was asking me to do. He pitied that I was so stupid. “You must have heard the King means to annul his marriage,” he said. “And if the Queen goes, who should replace her but a Howard? The King adores you, child. He speaks of you all the time. You could be Queen, raised above all others, and you could aid your family in doing so. Would you not like that?”
“Catherine,” said my grandmother, cutting in before I could answer. “I know you like the Queen but she will be set aside no matter what. The King has already decided this. There is nothing you can do for her, her fate is sealed, but there is something you can do for yourself, and for your family.”
“It would not be that I was harming her?” I asked, my voice thin.
“No, indeed. She will be cast off in any case,” said Norfolk.
“How will she be cast off, Your Grace? To a castle, to the Tower?”
Norfolk waved a hand. “She will not be mistreated as long as she goes easily. There has been no consummation, so it will be simple to separate them, and her brother is not that powerful. With France now our ally, he will not dare attack on her behalf.”
“The King will not hurt her, Your Grace?”
Norfolk narrowed his eyes. “No. There is no cause to, unless she makes one.”
I swallowed. The thought of hurting Queen Anne, sending her into a place where she might die of neglect, or by the sword, was horrifying. And, whispered my cousin, forget not you will be putting yourself in her place.
The place of the Queen… the most insecure seat in England. My grandmother and uncle were attempting to make it sound wonderful, a dream come true, but I would have to bed a man I had no desire for and would be in danger from the moment he put a ring upon my finger. I was under no illusions. The King had sent one wife to die in a dank castle, and she he had lived with for twenty years. My cousin Anne he had beheaded, and if word about court was true, he had known she was innocent. Queen Jane had died from neglect, for after she had brought forth the desired son she was not important anymore, and Queen Anne, my good mistress, was to be set aside in a manner unknown, simply because the King did not like her.
He had said he loved his first three queens absolutely, claimed they were part of his soul. Even if he felt like that for me now, would he always?
What if I failed to please him? What if he found out about my past? He knew me not. I had ventured no opinions. He had no way of knowing me. I was just as much a fantasy as the Queen had been, and now she was not what he had wanted, he was turning on her.
The same could happen to me.
But it did not matter. What I wanted had never mattered. I had no choice.
“I am not suited to be Queen,” I said, my voice barely audible over their excited chatter about all they would use me to do when I became Queen. “I am trained to be a maid, not mistress.”
They were about to throw me into something I was not prepared for. I was no princess like Katherine of Aragon, trained from birth to be Queen. I had not been a lady-in-waiting for years like my cousin Anne, or Jane Seymour. It was likely I would fail miserably and if I did, it would displease the King. If I was his perfect woman, I would know instantly how to please him. If I did not, I was not the perfect woman, and would be in danger.
My grandmother frowned. “It is true, she will need coaching,” she said to Norfolk. “Catherine has been at court only a few months.”
“That can be seen to,” Norfolk said. “And the King likes her innocence and lack of guile. That is what he finds charming.”
“But when Queen, he will expect her to know her place,” insisted my grandmother. “When Anne was Queen, she acted wrongly and he hated her for it. The same cannot happen to Catherine.”
“That is true,” he said. “But you can instruct her. You served Elizabeth of York. The King would prefer a queen like his mother, for he worships her memory. Have Catherine keep her house as she did, and the King will be pleased.”
“You will have to start coming here for lessons,” my grandmother said to me.
“That will do well,” Norfolk said, “for that way we can arrange the King meets her in private, but with one of us present so the old goat cannot get too intimate. He has to be teased, so he is wild for her, but held back so he knows the only way to get her is through marriage.”
I thought I might vomit. The scent of the almond and honey comfits at my side was too much. I stood, setting my cup on the table. They did not even glance my way.
“And you are certain the King means to set Queen Anne aside?” asked Agnes.
“He told me so himself,” said Norfolk. “The King does not consider Anne his lawful wife, and we have all heard that enough times to know what it means. We must get our candidate in before Cromwell, and we have the advantage, for the King is smitten with our girl.”
I stood at the window, staring at water lapping the banks of the Thames. They would hear no objections. I was going to be thrown at the King.
After telling me he would ensure I was never alone with the King, and imparting advice on how to tease my future husband, holding him at bay whilst tempting him on, my uncle left me with my grandmother.
I stared at her with blank eyes.
“You will say nothing of Dereham to the King or to your uncle,” she said. If I had suspected she knew all, now I knew.
“And if he comes back?”
“I will deal with him,” she said.
Walking to me, she brushed her finger to my cheek. “Look not so frightened, child.”
“My lady, you want me to betray my mistress, and entice a king who has rid himself of three wives, soon to be a fourth, to marry me.”
“You know what they did not,” she said. “You know how to please him. You will become to him all he wants. Be mild and meek, keep no opinions but his. Submit. That is what the others did not do, aside from Queen Jane, and that is why they fell.” She stroked my face. “When one makes a wager, there is always a risk. But you will be Queen, and with your uncle behind you, you will not fall.”
I nodded and tried to smile, but my cousin’s ghost whispered in my ear, saying once my uncle had been her ally, but as she fell he was there to push her down.
Whitehall Palace
Spring 1540
I returned to Whitehall a ghost of myself.
All the next day I was distracted. I kept dropping things, making the senior ladies of the Bedchamber round on me with harsh words. Eventually, seeing something was wrong, Jane sent for me after the evening meal and brought me to her rooms.
“You can go now, Mary,” she said to her maid when I was brought in. The girl bobbed a curtsey and left, closing the oaken door behind her.
Jane’s rooms were fine, fitting for her station. There was a bedchamber and a side room where we were, with a good blaze in the hearth and cushions about the fire. It was a miniature version of the Queen’s rooms. Through the door I had seen her bed, resplendent with yellow and white furnishings and curtains of red and white damask. Rochford knots stood upon the bedposts, with pillows of down waiting for her head to rest upon them.
“Come,” she said, fingering a pendant bearing a golden flower, its centre a great emerald. “You have been troubled and I would know why. Officially, you are here so I can scold you for your recent clumsiness, a first warning and a second would be dangerous, but that is not what will happen between us. You are my friend, Catherine. I want to know what is wrong.”
I needed someone. Needed to trust someone so much. The soul I had thought dead within me flew into my mouth, desperate to be heard. I told Jane everything, told her of my past, of what my uncle and grandmother wanted from my future, and of all my fears.
“If the King finds out what I did before I came to court, he will hate me,” I said, crying without attempting to stop the tears. “He thinks me an angel, as he thought the Queen. When he learns I am a fallen woman, he will destroy me.”
Jane widened her eyes and breathed out. I could see she thought it was a lot to take in, in a short space of time, but not once had she interrupted as I had blathered.
“With Manox,” she said. “It went no further than a few kisses and him placing himself in your hands?”
I shook my head, wiping my nose on a cloth.
“And no one saw anything?”
Again I shook my head. “Apart from my grandmother, who found us kissing.”
“The Dowager will say nothing.” Jane stared at the fire. “And this Dereham. He is in Ireland, a pirate?”
I nodded.
“Then his word will not be believed in any case.” She looked away from the fire, but flames were in her green eyes. “Catherine,” she said. “Your sins are no more or less than many other girls. You think all maids of honour are maids?” She snorted. “I would guess one might be, at best. Most girls get up to adventures, either consensually or not, before they come to court and if not then, certainly when they get here. And your story… though it saddens me, is not unique.”
She reached forward, taking my hands. “With Manox, you were a child,” she said. “Just turned twelve when he started forcing himself on you? That is only just the legal age of consent, Catherine. There is a reason most girls marry when they are above twenty years. He was twice your age and a man. You were a child. And with this Dereham…” She rolled her eyes. “You say the first time, he plied you with so much drink you remember not the night? If a girl told you a man had drugged her and taken his pleasure, would you think she had consented?” I shook my head and she echoed my gesture. “No, you would call it rape, and you would be right. The same can be true of drink. Enough in a girl and she has not the capacity to say yea or nay, but a man has the ability to decide for her, and well do I know that.”
She did not explain herself. “After that first time, you chose to let him into your bed, and, unwise as that was, I understand. You were frightened of him. You have been treated badly by men, which perhaps explains what I see when you flirt at court.”
“What?”
She sighed. “It is the same look as I see in a wild animal when it is cornered,” she said. “In some, like the hare, there is the urge to fly and in some, like the stag, there rises the will to fight. That is what I see in you when men come near. You cast those eyes down, you smile and chatter, but there is a war within you. You attack before you are attacked, seeking to take the battle on your terms. You use wiles to charm and disarm them, for you know the enemy you face. I have seen it before… in Anne Boleyn. She had the same eyes as yours, the same wildness.”
“She was… hurt?”
“If she was, she said nothing to me,” said Jane, “but I think so… before she came back to England. The King said once she had been ruined in France, but Anne was careful of her virtue, more so and more honestly than other women. I think she was abused, like you, and chose after that to fight, not with tooth or claw, but with her charm, her wiles, her sexuality if you will, to protect herself against men.” Jane paused. “Women must do much to protect against men, even those they know, even those they wed. Not all men listen when a wife says no.”
“But it is not possible for a husband to rape his wife. She belongs to him, is sworn to do what he wants.”
“You think that because something is law, it is just?” she asked. “That because something is decreed by the King or Parliament, it is good? The law is the King’s will, and the will of men. That is all. Whether just or not depends on the men. Oftentimes laws are simply there to make certain things easier for some, but never for all.”
“The law is unjust?”
“Often.”
Jane squeezed my hands. “But let us concentrate on the now. You say the King wants you, and your family push you towards him, as the next Queen?”
I nodded, my throat dry where my cheeks were wet.
“It is not as though you have a choice, you do understand that? A woman must obey her family, and they are right when they say the Queen will fall in any case, everyone can see it.” She took hold of my chin, lifting my reddened eyes to her emerald ones. “And if the King wants you, you are already his. Once he sets his mind on something, it happens.”
She dropped to her knees on the floor at my side and took me in her arms. “Catherine, if there is to be a new Queen, why should it not be you?”
“But if he finds out…”
“He will not. Your family can ensure that, as can your friends. Manox is too low to worry about. This Dereham may well stay in Ireland, or die there, and your grandmother can keep him quiet. The risk the King will find out is small, but I can help you. We can make a pill of blood that you can shatter on your wedding night so he will think you a maid. And if the King remains besotted, there is no risk. I have watched enough queens to know what he wants. You will become a mirror, reflecting him. That will keep you safe.”
I blinked. That was what I had thought once about Dereham.
Sensing nothing of my surprise, Jane went on. “If you can get with child, you will be untouchable. If you can bring forth a Duke of York, the King will protect you, and hear nothing ill about you.”
“What if I cannot?” I asked.
“There is no reason you should not conceive, you are young and strong. The only trouble may be with the King, but if it is as he says and he can still bring forth seed, just not with Queen Anne, then all is well.”
“And I have to marry him.”
“If he wills it, so shall it be,” she said, as though he were God. “But we can make you safe. This is not like before. You are not alone, not a scared child with no one to turn to. You have your family, and they have every reason to ensure you are made Queen and are kept Queen.”
“They betrayed my cousin when she fell.”
“Anne was haughty and proud. She put all her trust in the King, and when she failed to please him she had no allies left. You must learn from her mistakes. And you have something else.”
“What?”
“Me.” Jane smiled. “I have seen queens come and go four times now. If anyone can keep you steady, it is me. And I will not abandon you, as long as you promise the same to me.”
“You are my friend,” I said. “Perh
aps the only honest one I have for you alone know me.”
“And your friend I will be, through all of this. I will see you are safe… my Queen.”
Her smile became wide, and she pulled me to her, holding me in her warm arms. “Catherine, do not grieve. There is much contentment in being a queen. When the King loves, he does so with all his heart. He will lift you up. You will be adored, the highest of the high. Think not of what might go wrong, but of what might go well. Think of all that might be, with you as Queen of England.”
She pulled back, her eyes in mine. I felt dazed.
“And the King is not a young or well man,” she said. “You would be well-provided for, as a dowager queen, able to choose your next husband.”
*