by Deryn Lake
‘I like them the same, Sir, though differently.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘Well, Your Grace, the Lady Anne is rather shy and I love her like a dear little dog. But Her Grace is smooth and sleek and pretty, like a darling cat. They are both my pets.’
‘Well said,’ answered Henry. ‘You’ve got her silvered tongue, haven’t you?’
‘Whose?’
‘Nobody,’ he said abruptly and, heaving himself out of his chair, left the room without another word.
For the rest of that day, when His Grace did not return, Elizabeth puzzled over the remark. But as her father did not come to say goodnight to her — she was to leave the next morning — she was unable to question him further.
‘Where is His Grace?’ she asked Cat, who had come to tuck her in and plant a smacking kiss on her lips.
‘Oh, I think he is closeted with Sir Thomas Wriothesley somewhere.’
‘I don’t like that man,’ whispered Elizabeth. ‘He’s a dark devil.’
Catherine giggled. ‘You must not say things like that.’
‘Why not?’ answered Elizabeth. ‘He is. Wait and see.’
They kissed goodnight and Cat went to her apartments, wishing that Thomas Culpepper could come to her but fearing that within the confines of Hampton Court, though they had risked it before, a meeting would be too dangerous.
Yet long after she blew out her candle and fell into a lonely and rather restless sleep, the lights in the King’s apartments burned, for Henry was in discussion with Thomas Wriothesley, the principal Secretary of State. The King’s great frame wedged, as was customary, into an overpowering chair, threw a shadow on the wall like a vast spider sitting amidst its web. But on this occasion, Henry Tudor was the fly and the lean stalking Wriothesley the hunter as he paced the King’s chamber, words pouring from his lips in a torrent.
‘Your Grace, I beg you to believe what I tell you. I have conducted a further examination of witnesses regarding the Queen’s early life and it does not make a pretty tale. When she was twelve years old, Sir, she gave herself to her music teacher, Henry Mannox. Apparently the old Duchess caught them in flagrante delicto and beat them both, charging them never to be alone together again. But then, Your Grace, Francis Dereham, now Her Grace’s Private Secretary, took Mannox’s place in her affections. He regularly used to visit the maidens’ dormitory in both Horsham and Lambeth. The Duchess’s keys would be stolen by one of the girls, then they would let their lovers in. After they had all feasted on strawberries or, if they be not seasonable, apples and wine, they would make love. Dereham admits, Sir, from his own mouth that he has known the Queen carnally many times, both in his doublet and hose between the sheets, and in naked bed. He says they were betrothed, Your Grace, that the Queen entered into marriage with you when she was pre-contracted.’
The bulk in the chair shifted but said nothing.
‘So, Your Grace, the Council wish to meet in emergency session. They feel that this case cannot be overlooked any longer.’
Henry spoke at last. ‘Wriothesley, there is no chance at all that this is an anti-Howard plot?’
‘No, Your Grace. That family has enemies, it is well known. But nobody could bribe this number of witnesses. Would Dereham himself admit and risk so much just for money?’
‘No,’ said the King slowly, shaking his head. ‘No.’
‘Then, Sir, action must be taken.’
Henry nodded. ‘What do you suggest?’
This was so unlike him that for a moment Wriothesley was thrown off balance. But he recovered quickly.
‘I would advise, Sir, that the Queen’s movements be curtailed lest she try to leave Court.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Henry almost as if he were in a dream. ‘See to it, Wriothesley. But first, make sure the Lady Elizabeth leaves the palace. Have her woken at dawn and taken to Chelsea. Then put guards on the Queen’s door. You may inform Her Grace yourself.’
Wriothesley bowed. ‘It shall be done, Your Grace. And may I inform the Council that a meeting will be convened tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ answered Henry with a complete change of manner, ‘but make it the evening. I intend to hunt all day.’
The Secretary of State stared astonished. ‘Hunt, Sir?’
‘Yes,’ said the King shortly, ‘hunt. Good night, Sir Thomas.’
‘Good night, Sir,’ answered a bemused Wriothesley, and backed from the room, wondering if he would ever know the workings of Henry Tudor’s amazingly complex mind.
*
By seven o’clock the next day a rather sleepy Lady Elizabeth had been put in her litter, protesting that she had not said goodbye to either father or stepmother, and taken firmly away from Hampton Court. Having checked that nothing had been left behind to cause the child to return, the Secretary of State called upon the captain of the King’s guards with whom he conferred in private for ten minutes. After that he made his way to the Queen’s apartments.
It was Lady Rochford who received him in the ante-chamber, informing Wriothesley coldly that Her Grace was still in bed and would not see him. Smirking a little, he made a very formal bow.
‘Lady Rochford, I bear grave tidings. Certain matters have come to light and the Council is now investigating allegations regarding the Queen. Madam, you must inform Her Grace that on His Grace’s instruction she is to be confined to her apartments pending further enquiries.’
The look on the dark face opposite his frightened Wriothesley. Lady Rochford lost colour so rapidly that he thought she was about to faint and went to catch her. But she recovered quickly, pulling herself out of his grasp as if he had the plague. From very tight lips she said, ‘May I tell Her Grace with what she has been charged?’
‘Nothing as yet,’ answered Wriothesley curtly. ‘The Council have not completed their investigations.’
The eyes staring into his looked haunted. ‘But what is it that is being investigated?’
The Secretary of State brought his face to within an inch of hers. ‘The Queen’s morals, Madam. It is said by many that she is a loose woman. Now what would you know about that, eh?’
Again Lady Rochford drained white but this time she was ready for the shock. ‘I know nothing, Sir. Now I’ll ask you to be gone. I must prepare the Queen for all that lies ahead,’ she answered in clipped tones.
‘Yes, do so,’ Wriothesley said over his shoulder as he made for the door. ‘Remind her that she stays here only at His Grace’s pleasure. He could quite easily have sent her to the Tower.’
He was rewarded by a cry of anguish as he opened the door to the sound of a contingent of guards marching purposefully along the corridor towards the Queen’s apartments.
*
An hour later the King, dressed for hunting, left his apartments and made for the Chapel to hear Mass and pray for the full recovery of his four-year-old son, suffering with a quartern ague, as the multitude of physicians attending the boy assured Henry it was. Wriothesley had already left for London to convene an emergency meeting but the fact that he had been there overnight and that there were now guards standing outside the Queen’s apartments had not gone unnoticed. The whispering gallery buzzed with rumour and there was a huge attendance at the service to see if anything untoward should occur.
The King took his place alone in the royal pew and the ritual was just about to begin when a sudden uproar broke out. There was the sound of running feet and Catherine Howard’s voice could distinctly be heard.
‘Mercy, Your Grace, I beg you for mercy. Protect me I implore you,’ she was screaming again and again. There were two doors to the private pew, one leading from the King’s apartments, the other from the Queen’s. Now the handle of her door turned and every eye looked aghast. But before it could open there was the sound of a fall, followed by a cry of pain. The King was seen to shudder as the noise of a violent struggle broke out, accompanied by the most terrible shrieks ever heard. That the Queen was in a state of hysteria and be
ing forcibly dragged, struggling violently and begging for her life, could easily be interpreted. There was a noise in the chapel like a distant moan of thunder as everyone murmured to everyone else. Only the King remained silent, though beads of perspiration could be seen to run down his face. There followed a terrible few minutes in which the sounds of the Queen’s agony finally grew less, then died completely away. Then Henry spoke.
‘Begin the Mass, Sir Priest,’ he said tersely, and if he was shaken he hid it well.
But as soon as the service was over the King, very pale and talking to no one, left the Palace for an afternoon hunt. And later that day, as dusk fell over the River Thames, he was rowed to London in the royal barge to attend the meeting of the Council. He was never to set eyes on Catherine Howard again, his last memory of her fondling Elizabeth, just as it had been of another Queen who in the recent past he had sent most savagely to her death.
*
The extraordinary meeting had been called in the home of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; a wry move indeed. For it was in this house that Henry had first set eyes on pretty Catherine, and it was here that the lovers had held their clandestine meetings, far away from Court spies. Henry tasted bitter gall as he alighted at the water steps, so full of sweet and recent memories of a pretty little girl waving excitedly when he arrived.
‘By God,’ he said to himself as he limped his way indoors. ‘They had better have a case to answer. If my sweetheart suffered as she did today and it is all for naught …’
But in his heart he knew the cruel truth and as he entered the great room and looked at the Council members, already gathered and grim-faced, the King suffered the most terrible moment of bleak despair. Nonetheless, he regarded them with mean and vicious eyes, determined to prove them wrong if he could. Catherine had brought great comfort for a man in his advancing years; a pretty face and body, and constant assurances that he was virile. If it were possible at all to prove the wretched informants mere gossipmongers, with gutter mentalities only fit to spew out calumnies and lies, the King of England was prepared to do so. With a smack of defiance in his lumbering walk, Henry Tudor took the high chair and declared the Council meeting open. Swallowing hard, the Archbishop of Canterbury rose.
‘Your Grace, it is my painful duty to tell you that further investigations into the allegations laid against the Queen’s Highness lead this Council to the firm conclusion that they are true. Your Grace, we believe there is a case to answer.’
Henry shifted in his chair and closed one eye, the other blinking lizard-like. He said nothing.
Sir Thomas Wriothesley got to his feet for his turn. ‘Your Grace, as I informed you yesterday the statement of Francis Dereham that he was betrothed to the Queen and therefore had every right to intimacy with her is sworn to by others.’
‘Lies,’ said Henry viciously. ‘Lies manufactured by enemies of the Howards.’
The Duke of Norfolk, sitting opposite Edward Seymour, gave a slight nod of his head at this but unfortunately it was seen by the King.
‘You agree, my Lord. You know your niece to be pure, am I right?’
Norfolk was cornered and knew it. Rumour after rumour had reached his ears of late and he was now convinced that his stepmother, the Dowager Duchess, had done little more than run a high-class bawdy house while the young people of the Howard kinship had been under her protection.
‘Your Grace,’ he said, then stopped, unable to go on.
‘Well?’
‘Your Grace, in truth, I no longer know. Like yourself I am plagued by rumour.’
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, stood up purposefully. ‘Your Grace, I believe that the matter has far outstripped rumour. Francis Dereham says the Queen only took him into her service as Private Secretary that she might assure herself he spread no word of their past. He was blackmailing her, Your Grace. Sir, the Queen must answer this case.’
There was an agonised silence during which Edward sat down again and everyone shifted their feet. Finally Wriothesley said, ‘Your Grace, do we have your permission to proceed?’
The great bulk in the chair made no move.
‘Sir?’ said Wriothesley again.
A muffled snort was his only answer and everyone stared aghast as the King’s vast shoulders heaved convulsively.
Oh Christ! thought Edward Seymour, more distressed than he had been for years, the King is crying. This is more than can be borne.
Though he longed to look away, he watched with a terrible fascination as Henry plunged his head into his hands, his whole vast body wracked with sobs. But this was more than crying, it was an orgy of weeping, of misery and wretchedness, as Henry Tudor publicly realised that he was old, that women no longer cared if he lived or died, that he was nothing but a vast blob of humanity with suppurating legs.
‘God, how hateful,’ said Edward to himself.
It was both embarrassing and shaming to witness such a blustering bully as the King reduced to a shambling cripple and yet, finally, there was justice in it. The Earl of Hertford found himself unable to summon up one ounce of pity as Henry blubbered and gulped, his nose emitting slime, his eyes puffing up. Then suddenly the King lurched to his feet, grabbing for his sword which, in the manner of dangerous comedy, stuck in its scabbard.
‘Bring me a weapon,’ the betrayed husband was calling wildly, ‘I shall kill her myself, torture her to death.’ Henry wept afresh. ‘I regret my fate in meeting such ill-conditioned wives.’ He rounded on his Council. ‘It is your fault,’ he screamed, waving a finger big as a bladder. ‘It is you who constantly urge me to marry. How dare you enslave me with such a great whore!’
He went purple and Edward found himself wishing that the man would die, that the King’s son Edward, his own nephew, could ascend the throne and there would be an end to this terrible reign of death and terror. But he controlled every thought and emotion as Henry sank back into his chair, choking.
It was Norfolk, wily as a fox, hoping to reinstate himself in His Grace’s favour after the awful revelations about his niece, who stepped forward.
‘Your Grace, are you ill?’
The King fixed him with a terrible look. ‘If I am it would be you and your accursed clan who are to blame. Get out of my sight.’
Norfolk bowed, but said nothing, leaving the room with as much dignity as he could muster.
‘Yes, Sir Thomas,’ gasped Henry, turning to Wriothesley at last. ‘You may proceed. Make a full examination into the life of the Queen and report everything you find directly to me.’
Wriothesley nodded. ‘Of course, Your Grace. You may be assured that the enquiry will be exhaustive.’
Right at the back of his brain, taken from an early questioning of witnesses, a name was coming up with, so far, nothing to pin to it. Yet it nagged. Turning away so that no one could see what he wrote, Wriothesley scratched ‘Thomas Culpepper’ on a piece of paper, then added the words, ‘Get further information’ before he slipped it into his pocket.
*
On the day following the Council meeting the Queen’s Grace was interrogated. Dereham, having been re-examined in the meanwhile, had sworn that he had not made love to the Queen since her marriage, for his place had been taken by another. The name Thomas Culpepper at last meant what it should. Armed with all the information he needed, Sir Thomas Wriothesley had gone to work.
She had broken down of course, the woman she had become swamped by the frightened girl Catherine had recently been. By the end of the day the Council knew everything, even down to Culpepper’s only other offence, violating the wife of a park keeper in a thicket.
‘Less serious than violating the wife of a King in a palace,’ the Earl of Hertford had remarked drily, and there had been a smattering of laughter.
The pathetic love letter which Catherine had written in her own hand, very laboriously because she had always had difficulty with reading and letters, was spoken aloud.
‘I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you
and speak with you … it makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company … I would you were with me now that you might see what pain I take in writing to you. Yours as life endures, Katheryne.’
The words rang hollowly off Wriothesley’s tongue and even more hollowly in Henry Tudor’s heart. Yet he could not bring himself to order such a pretty child into the Tower. After a week of indecision, the King decreed that her courtiers should be dismissed and that Catherine herself should be sent to Syon House on the banks of the Thames. The girl had made herself far too ill for prison, screaming hysterically one minute, then weeping the next. In spite of the cuckold she allegedly had made of him, Henry could not exact full punishment until she was charged.
The atmosphere in Hampton Court grew heavier and heavier, the imprisoned Queen still languishing in her apartments. So it was almost with a sense of relief that on November 13th, Catherine’s ladies and gentlemen were called to a meeting in the great hall to be told their fate by the Lord Chancellor himself. Audley, standing on the raised dais that he might be seen, cleared his throat importantly and looked around him. They were all there with the exception of Lady Rochford and the Queen’s four childhood friends, who had been taken to London for questioning. Brooding and sullen but with a terrible air of triumph about her, he saw Princess Mary standing with Norfolk’s daughter, the Duchess of Richmond, and Lady Margaret Douglas, the King’s niece. Anne Bassett of Calais was present, her stepfather Lord Lisle now disgraced and in the Tower. Thomas Seymour, dashing as ever, was loitering near the back, as were many of the Queen’s Ladies, including Lady Latymer.
Audley cleared his throat again, then held up his hand. There was immediate silence.
‘Lady Mary, my Lords and Ladies, ladies and gentlemen. As you all by now know, the Queen’s Grace stands accused of various offences, and tomorrow is to be removed from this palace of Hampton Court to Syon House. It is therefore the King’s wish that her establishment should be disposed of in the following manner. Please listen carefully. Sir Edward Baynton is to go to Syon with the Queen and be in charge of her household there, my Lady Baynton also to go to serve her. There shall also be at Syon three other ladies of the Queen’s own choice and two chamberers. These names will be announced later today.’