by Deryn Lake
Soon, oh soon, I can put aside this dreary black, she thought. Oh John, forgive me.
An invitation to attend Court came as rather a surprise in the middle of all this activity. In fact it was extremely inconvenient. But a summons to a banquet at Hampton Court could not easily be refused, so with a sigh Katherine added a new black gown to Scutt’s overflowing order.
‘I wonder why I have been invited,’ she said to Thomas, who had called for supper but refused to stay the night until they were safely married.
‘The King’s bored and lonely and fat as a pig,’ came the irreverent reply. ‘God’s passion, but you should see the stomach of our monarch. Stout as a barrel and daily getting bigger. And as for the smell from his rotting leg …’
‘Oh don’t,’ said Katherine, putting her finger to her nose. ‘It isn’t kind. He can’t help it.’
‘I think he can,’ answered Thomas wickedly, starting to stalk her round a chair. ‘I think he’s brought it on himself. He’s riddled with the grand pox, the French pox and every other pox you can name.’
‘Oh surely not!’
‘Oh surely yes.’
He made a flying leap for her and caught her, squealing, in his arms. ‘Don’t you let our royal brother-in-law get anywhere near you.’
‘No hope of that,’ answered Katherine, unaware of the portent of those words.
The invitation was for early May and she set off in the morning, riding to the river and then taking Lord Latymer’s barge which was rowed leisurely upstream towards the palace from which Katherine had been so summarily dismissed fifteen months ago. Now, as she approached it, she had no emotion other than that of slight boredom. All she wanted was to get this dreary feast over and done, that she might return to Thomas Seymour and her wedding plans.
Henry Tudor, or so Katherine believed, had been bitterly hurt by the infidelity of his ‘rose without a thorn’, and in the months following her execution had been wretchedly depressed. But of late he had been feasting ladies once more and taking advice to be merry from his adopted sister, the Lady Anne of Cleves. Despite everything the King was doing his best to revive his old carefree way.
But with what overwhelming difficulties, thought Katherine on seeing him again. He had been obese when she had left Court and now he seemed doubled in size, a monster hobbling on a stick; so swollen in the face that his visage had almost become featureless, only the meagre eyebrows and fuzzy beard giving any line of demarcation in a sea of puffy white flesh.
God almighty! thought Katherine, and was appalled to see him limping in her direction.
‘Ah, Lady Latymer,’ Henry wheezed as Katherine bent low before him. ‘Good to see you, Madam. We believe that these days you have turned into something of a theologian. Unless our spies play us false.’
‘Spies, Your Grace?’ said Katherine in some alarm, her mind not turning to religion but to her illicit weeks of love with Thomas Seymour.
‘We have heard that you are a follower of the new ideas, Madam. That you are very tolerant in your outlook. That you embrace the ideals of Erasmus.’
‘Sir?’ She literally did not know what to answer.
‘We find that we tend more and more towards educated women,’ said Henry, gasping his way into a chair and indicating that she should do the same. ‘There is nothing more satisfying to our mind than a woman who thinks.’
‘I thank Your Grace,’ answered Katherine, wondering what could possibly be coming next.
‘Theology fascinates us as you know,’ the King went on, swaying his afflicted leg from side to side to avoid undue pressure. ‘We have discussed it since youth, as we believe have you, Madam.’
‘Not really, Sir,’ answered Katherine, finding her voice. ‘My late husband was a devout Catholic. It is only since his death that I have felt free to explore new ideas, reforms. Though my mind has dwelt on them for some years.’
To her intense dismay a vast and pudgy hand reached out and patted hers. ‘Forgive us, Lady Latymer. We have not offered our condolences on the recent loss of your excellent husband. We beg your indulgence.’ A deprecating smile twitched the King’s little mouth. ‘We have had much on our mind since you were last at Court.’
Katherine lowered her eyes, guilt running through her blood like quicksilver. ‘Lord Latymer is badly missed,’ she lied, wishing that she had not come, that she had made some excuse on the grounds of poor health.
‘We are sure of that,’ said Henry with solemnity. ‘But one must not dwell in the past. That is fatal as we have discovered to our cost. Whatever one’s age, however old chronologically, it is never too late for a fresh start. Or so we believe. What think you, Lady Latymer?’
The conversation was growing so strange that Katherine could hardly make head nor tail of it. ‘One must always look to the future, Sir,’ she answered lamely.
‘Ha, ha,’ Henry bellowed roguishly. ‘And with that in mind I give you an order, Madam.’
‘And what is that?’ she asked, horror-stricken.
‘We wish to see you at Court again. We would discuss at length your new ideas. We want to hear you air your views, we want to talk with clever women. Beauty is one thing, Lady Latymer — though you possess that in plenitude believe me — but brains are another. We have come to the conclusion after all these years’ — again that sinister chuckle — ‘that to possess one without the other is useless. That no woman bears the right to the name unless she is possessed of both charm and wit.’
The King arched his nonsensical eyebrows, waiting for her reply.
‘I expect you are right, Your Grace.’
‘Expect,’ said Henry jovially, ‘expect? We know it for the truth, my dear Lady Latymer, and that is why we feel we shall enjoy your company so much.’
It was then that Katherine felt the teeth of the trap close about her. There could be no mistaking that leer, that vile double meaning.
Oh Christ be my salvation, she thought. He wants me for his mistress.
With an effort of will that was almost beyond her power, Katherine lowered her eyes to her lap and kept her face quite calm.
‘As Your Grace pleases,’ she said, and in her breast felt her courage begin to die.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The decision of the Duchess of Norfolk was, once arrived at, swift and merciless. Too much trouble had already been caused for the Howards by promiscuous little girls and wayward boys. Sapphira and her brothers must leave the following morning; Joscelin, on the Duke’s return from London, was to suffer a beating at the hands of the head of the Howard clan. And with that the sordid affair would be forgotten, though never forgiven, and life at Kenninghall could continue as calmly as before.
She announced her decision in a hushed voice, a strategy that Elizabeth Howard had found far more effective over the years than shouting. First the girl was ushered into her presence.
‘I know you cannot speak, young lady,’ the menacing whisper had begun, ‘but that excuses you nothing. I thought you enchanting when you arrived. Now I consider you loathsome. You are forward beyond your years. Tomorrow you, and your brothers with you, will be despatched to whatever hell-hole you came from.’
The ancient knowledge of Sapphira could, then, have played tricks but instead she bowed her head in the silence that was her perpetual curse. After a second, during which the woman-child gained control of her misery, Sapphira curtsied deeply and left the room, aware that she must never be parted from Joscelin, were the forces of all the world to be ranged against them.
Having made sure that the girl was out of sight, Lord Joscelin Howard was led before the Duchess.
‘I am aware,’ said Elizabeth, in a somewhat kinder tone, ‘that you are full grown and within the next two years likely to wed Ursula, but that does not forgive your seduction of a young girl residing here under our protection.’
The handsome boy went white. ‘But Madam, Your Grace, it was not like that. There was nothing vile in what we did. I love Sapphira, I …’
&nb
sp; ‘Love?’ interrupted the Duchess contemptuously. ‘What in Heaven’s name would you know of love? A stripling youth of fifteen. A callow boy.’
Joscelin swallowed, manfully forbearing to point out that she had called him full grown but a moment or two before.
‘I could send you forth from this place, never to return, were it not for the love that the Duke and I bear your father.’
Lord John, one of the much younger sons of the house but brother to Norfolk, had died tragically early in life leaving his widow, now contentedly remarried, to cope with two sturdy infants, both of whom Thomas Howard had taken under his wing.
Joscelin gulped. ‘But, Madam, my intentions are honourable. I want to marry Sapphira. I will see Ursula’s father, break our contract …’
Once again the Duchess interrupted him but this time she went so far as to laugh in the boy’s face.
‘See fathers? Break contracts? My dear child, you do not know you are born. Your father signed his pledge with Ursula’s while you were both still in swaddling. It is she you will marry and there’s an end to it.’
‘But I don’t love her,’ said the wretched young man, feeling the horrible embarrassment of tears sting behind his eyes.
‘Love has nothing to do with it,’ answered the Duchess caustically.
‘Well then it should, by God it should,’ said Jocelyn with spirit, then shrank at the realisation of his rudeness to Norfolk’s wife.
She smiled patronisingly. ‘You’ll learn, my child,’ she answered, still with that annoying smirk.
‘If it means learning how not to love,’ he answered with dignity, ‘then I prefer not to do so.’
The Duchess shrugged her shoulders. ‘That is your choice, Lord Joscelin. Now go to your room and stay there. I do not want you to come out again until those three wretches have gone.’
‘Gone?’ repeated the boy, his face draining of colour even further.
‘Yes, gone. All of them will be sent packing in the morning. I cannot risk the girl staying here in view of your foolishness, and without her there is no point in the brothers remaining.’
Joscelin knew he had to leave the room, feeling tears start to run unchecked.
‘I submit to your decree, Madam,’ he mumbled. ‘I will go as you have ordered.’
And with that he bowed swiftly and hurried out, making for the dormitory inhabited by the older boys which, at this hour of the evening, was mercifully empty.
Once there, Joscelin flung himself down on his bed, weeping bitterly, and might have remained like that for some time had not the crackle of paper sounded in his ear. A note had been pinned to the bed hangings, only visible to someone actually lying on it. With a burst of hope Joscelin snatched it from its place and ripped it open.
‘Greetings to my Lord Joscelin,’ he read and, despite the circumstances, had to smile at the formality of the writer. ‘I know you feel, as I do, that we must never be separated. Therefore, I shall be at the stables at two hours after midnight and will await you. Do not worry about the watchmen.’
Joscelin brightened. Cautiously looking round to reassure himself he was still alone, the boy began to set aside one or two things he would need for the journey. Then he lay patiently on his bed, waiting for night to come.
*
Around the deserted monastery of Charterhouse the orchards were in blossom and in the gardens, once so lovingly tended by the brothers, now bloomed a great mass of flowers and weeds, growing brightly side by side. Through the cloisters birds flew and nested and the vine that had been cultivated, not too successfully in the English climate, this year already showed signs of having a bumper crop. Herbs grew wild in what had once been the herbarium, where the monks had grown cure-alls for their winter ailments and delicacies to enrich the abbot’s food. Normally Katherine Latymer would have gone to pick them, or at least sent one of her kitchen lads to do so, but today she walked through the sweet-smelling place with a solemn face, her hands folded in front of her. And Sir Thomas Seymour, who paced alongside appeared equally grim, his flashing smile quite lost and his eyes dull and angry looking.
‘If only I could be sure,’ Lady Latymer was saying. ‘If only I knew what His Grace wants of me.’
‘Your body, is my guess,’ answered Thomas shortly. ‘Though there’s nothing he could do with it if it were delivered to him.’
‘How coarse you are,’ replied Katherine furiously. ‘This is no matter for jest. I think you should withdraw that remark.’
‘I do, I do,’ said Thomas hastily. ‘I only spoke through bitterness. For how could this happen with our wedding only a few weeks away? I cannot believe our ill-fortune.’
There was a hut in the garden, used for drying herbs, and outside it a rotting wooden seat. On this Katherine now sat, patting the place beside her.
‘Whatever happens,’ she said in a conciliatory tone, ‘we must not quarrel. We must not let these events make us fall out, one with the other.’
Thomas sat beside her, plunging his head into his hands. ‘But it is all so worrying. His Grace has recalled you to Court for some reason. Why does he seek out your company more and more?’
‘I suppose,’ said Katherine slowly, ‘that that couldn’t be the sum total of it? That he merely wants a woman with whom to debate?’
One of Thomas’s eyes stared hollowly at her through his parted fingers. ‘Not a chance, my innocent. The man may be past it but he can still dream. He wants a bed-mate, and if she can talk as well, all the better.’
‘Oh my God,’ Katherine said despairingly. ‘If that is true, what shall I do?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Thomas, lowering his hands and shaking his head. ‘I simply don’t know. All we can do is pray that this phase will end. That he will fasten his piggy eyes on some other benighted female and that you can fade quickly into the background and marry me before he remembers you again.’
‘Perhaps we should do that now,’ said Katherine, breathing rather fast. ‘Perhaps we should marry at once and put an end to this uncertainty.’
‘I think such a move could be dangerous,’ Thomas answered thoughtfully. ‘If we do that it could be your head and mine on the block for some trumped-up charge.’
‘Of what?’
‘Interfering with the King’s desires or an indictment equally flimsy, Wriothesley would think of something.’
Katherine shivered. ‘That man!’
‘Yes, that man.’
She looked at Thomas very earnestly. ‘Are you serious, sweetheart? Do you really think we would be in trouble?’
‘Until we know what is in the royal monster’s mind, one way or another, yes.’
‘Does that mean you want to cancel the wedding?’ asked Katherine coldly.
Thomas smiled, his naughty face reappearing like the sun. ‘No, of course not. Let us just tread with caution, that’s all.’
Lady Latymer actually pouted. ‘Have you tired of me, is that it?’
Thomas pulled her on to his knee. ‘Any more of that and I shall smack you like a naughty girl. I love you, I actually do! And, believe me, it came as a great shock when I discovered it. So be good, sweetheart. You are the only one ever to capture my heart so you can be very sure I won’t let you go now.’
‘And His Grace?’
‘Pox on his cod, if he hasn’t already got one.’
‘Really!’ said Katherine. ‘You must have more respect.’
‘I don’t see why,’ answered Thomas seriously. ‘I don’t see why at all.’
*
Midnight came with all its ghostly quiet, and then the hours known as small, when the human spirit grows weak and people become afraid of stillness. In the dormitory shared with four other young men, Joscelin lay awake, nervously counting the minutes, listening to the breathing of his companions, praying that none of them would stir when the moment came for him to cross the long room and make his way out through the slumbering castle.
Thought after fearful thought had gone through his min
d as he kept his vigil, and yet one thing overcame every doubt he had. Joscelin wanted to be with Sapphira, come what may, and if he must risk being cast out by his family and never spoken to again by any one of them, then so be it. For he loved the girl with the perfect love that seems peculiar to the very young, as if growing older and more experienced kills some precious thing that can never return.
With no way of telling the time the boy was forced to rely on counting and guesswork so, terrified of raising the alarm, only when he reckoned that it must be nearly two o’clock did he finally rise and walk on bare feet across the darkened room. Fortunately he knew his way in the blackness and there was a faint light coming through the high windows from a waxing moon. Even luckier, the floor was of stone and there were no creaking boards to betray him. Nonetheless, he bumped into a chair, making a slight thud. Hardly daring to breathe, Joscelin stood still and listened but none of the boys stirred.
As with all great dwelling places built in an earlier century the central stairs were not the only means of descent, and now Joscelin fled to a remote spiral in a little-used tower, at the bottom of which a door set in an archway led outside. Using this route meant that he could easily avoid night watchmen but the hazard lay in that he might find himself locked in. It was simply going to be a matter of chance.
Much as Joscelin expected, the door was bolted but it then occurred to him that the key could well be nearby. Reaching above his head his fingers closed on an ancient and rather rusty object hanging on a hook, and breathing a sigh of relief, he inserted it into the lock.
The noise that followed was enormous. As the antique thing groaned round it sounded as if the entire castle, let alone the echoing tower in which he stood, was blowing up. Joscelin’s heart raced as somewhere in the distance he heard a voice call out.
He flung himself out into the starlight and then followed one moment of very clear good sense as he started to plunge towards the stables. Turning back, he pulled the door to and locked it from the outside. If pursuers were coming that way they were going to find themselves imprisoned.