Pour The Dark Wine

by Deryn Lake

  ‘But I have my own views on the reformed religion.’

  ‘Then keep them to yourself.’

  She kissed him on the cheek. ‘You are profoundly wise.’

  Thomas grinned. ‘For a foolish fellow, perhaps.’

  Katherine went pale again. ‘But how shall I stand him near me? How can I tolerate him after you?’

  ‘From what I hear,’ said Thomas softly, ‘there’s not a great deal to worry about.’ Then he winked.

  ‘Who says that?’

  ‘Even learned physicians must talk, my dear. I think you will find that though the spirit is more than willing the decaying flesh is excessively weak.’

  ‘I pray God it is so.’

  ‘I too,’ answered Thomas fervently. ‘For to me we are still betrothed and will remain so until the day we marry.’

  ‘Would it be dangerous for me to keep the ring?’

  ‘The little garnet? No. Wear it on the left hand index finger and say it was from Lord Latymer.’

  ‘I shall never leave it off.’

  ‘Nor I the gold band you gave me.’

  The moment when they must part had finally come. Thomas kissed Katherine lightly.

  ‘I shall not say goodbye but au revoir,’ he said. ‘For I’ll be back on the day you are free.’

  ‘Do you swear it?’

  ‘I do,’ he answered solemnly and with that left her side without another word.

  *

  To the Lady Elizabeth, who had possessed her own household in Hatfield in Hertfordshire ever since she had been three months old, a new Queen meant two things. The first, and by far the most important, that she, Elizabeth, might be invited to spend more time at court, provided the lady liked her of course. And second, that it was a new woman to inspect curiously, the latest in a parade of wives since her mother had been executed when Elizabeth was only two and a half.

  She could remember her, of course. Or rather not so much remember as have a vivid impression, particularly of her mother’s scent. When she had been picked up in Anne Boleyn’s arms and held high, Elizabeth had smelled the wonderful heady perfume which Anne had always worn at her neck. And, close to, she had seen the sheen on that heavy fall of dark hair, and the bright eyes, sparkling when they had looked at Elizabeth, so very vivacious and attractive.

  Of the women who had followed her mother, and there had been three, Elizabeth liked the Lady Anne of Cleves best. She had been and still was such great fun, laughing uproariously, playing cards, fondling the little girl on her lap and giving her sweets: a wonderful stepmother for the brief time it had lasted. Cat Howard had been adorable, of course. But then she had done something awful, something which had been kept from Elizabeth because she was too young, which could be only vaguely guessed at. And now there was to be a new one. Her royal father, the hugest man in the world so people said, was to be a bridegroom once more.

  ‘Who is she?’ Elizabeth had asked her new governess, Katherine Champernowne.

  ‘A widow I believe, my Lady. Katherine, Lady Latymer. I hear she is very well educated.’

  Elizabeth brightened. She enjoyed learning because she was good at it and, much as she loved the Lady Anne, she really was rather stupid when it came to knowing things.

  ‘And His Grace the King is betrothed to her?’

  ‘I don’t know, my Lady. But I do know that you are to go to Court with your sister to meet her.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next week,’ had come the answer. ‘And you are to have some new clothes.’

  ‘Whee!’ Elizabeth had shouted, jumping in the air, while her governess had smiled tolerantly. The little thing had not had much loving in her life and, if rumour were to be believed, Lady Latymer had plenty of experience with stepchildren.

  Thank goodness, thought Mistress Champernowne, that the King has chosen a sober matron at last.

  She was a little surprised, therefore, when in the middle of June she accompanied the two royal ladies to Hampton Court, to see not a plump middle-aged widow woman as she had imagined, but an attractive female no more than thirty.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said to herself. ‘I hope she lasts!’

  Her charge, of course, adored Katherine Latymer. All the more, probably, because she was young and pretty and not a fat frump as had been imagined. And poor Mary, the downtrodden daughter of Katharine of Aragon, came to life like a kicked animal suddenly given affection. She was twenty-seven, still without a husband despite years of negotiations, and tragically embittered.

  ‘What do you think?’ whispered Elizabeth to Mistress Champernowne as Lady Latymer conversed merrily with Mary Tudor.

  ‘I think she is going to be a wonderful wife for His Grace and that she will make all of you children very happy.’

  ‘Do you think Edward will come to Court?’

  ‘More often I expect, though His Grace your father is naturally concerned for the Prince’s health.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Elizabeth, but she was no longer listening, remembering another occasion when she had come to Hampton Court to see her father and been removed unusually early the next morning. Sir Thomas Seymour had been her escort to the Palace on that occasion and for no particular reason he came into Elizabeth’s mind quite vividly. She could almost see the long lean body, the dark golden hair, the captivating blue eyes.

  ‘I wonder where Tom Seymour is these days,’ she said aloud and was surprised to see Lady Latymer look up and glance in her direction.

  ‘I wouldn’t know that,’ answered Katherine Champernowne. ‘Now hush a little. I think you might be disturbing His Grace’s intended bride.’

  ‘Oh, I mustn’t do that.’ Elizabeth was instantly contrite. ‘I want her to like me. She will, won’t she?’

  ‘Of course,’ said her governess soothingly. ‘As long as you behave yourself.’

  ‘My mother didn’t behave, did she?’ Elizabeth felt that she was having a brain storm even before the words had left her lips.

  ‘My Lady! You must never say things like that.’ Mistress Champernowne’s face and voice were furious. ‘Thanks be given that His Grace is not here, for I would not be in your shoes if he had heard you. You would be wise not to mention your mother at Court, or anywhere else for that matter.’

  Anne sans tête, said Elizabeth silently but to her governess she bobbed a polite curtsey and answered, ‘No, Madam. I shall in future remember that my mother is dead and most certainly buried.’

  *

  On July 12th, 1543, the two people who should have been marrying one another, had they not been overruled by a higher power, started the day in exactly the same way. Thomas, in Calais, had heard from his man Jack, who had been back to England briefly to look to Thomas’s house and also glean Court information, that this day Katherine, Lady Latymer, was to wed Henry Tudor.

  ‘Oh,’ he had said, continuing to comb his hair and trim his beard as his servant told him the news. ‘I see. Wait there, Jack, while I finish dressing.’

  Then he had gone into his bedroom, where he was lodged in the Deputy’s house, and wept bitterly. It was a terrible experience. Only once since childhood, when Jane had died, had Thomas cried, and now he felt desolated and ashamed.

  A milksop not a man, he thought, and cried all the more, his ambition to marry the highest in the land forgotten in his inexplicable love for that serious little widow, Katherine.

  From the dressing room Jack had called out, ‘Can I get you anything, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered in a muffled voice. ‘Gascon wine, as strong as you can find.’

  ‘Very good, Sir.’

  And with that he heard Jack leave the room as Thomas, wiping his eyes, desperately tried to get himself into some sort of shape.

  In her apartments at Hampton Court, Katherine wept too, also in the privacy of her bedroom, turning and turning Tom’s little garnet ring on her finger, and saying under her breath, ‘It should have been you, my love. It should have been you.’

  As he dressed in
Calais in preparation to receive his appointment as Marshall of Henry Tudor’s army, so she dressed in England in order to become Henry Tudor’s wife. As Tom put on a crimson doublet, all tricked out with gold, so his Kate was adorned by waiting women in bridal dress, heavy with jewels and gold brocade. As he walked the short distance to the Staple Hall for the simple ceremony, so she progressed along the corridors to the Queen’s Closet where the marriage was to take place. Waiting to greet Sir Thomas was Sir John Wallop, under whom he would serve; waiting to greet Lady Latymer was the King of England, to whom she must promise her servitude. But there the similarity ended.

  Thomas went into a business-like room, was given a piece of parchment which officially appointed him Marshall of the English army, then had his hand shaken by Sir John, and a brief congratulatory drink to follow with some fellow officers. Katherine entered a room full of people, glad that behind her stood three bridal attendants, the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth, and her sister Anne Herbert, as she saw the sea of faces.

  Everyone of importance was there. She recognised the King’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, Jane Lady Dudley, the Duchess of Suffolk, and on the male side many leading courtiers, only one of whom meant anything to Katherine. She stared and stared at Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, wondering if he had any inkling at all of the love that had passed between her and his brother. But Thomas had obviously been as discreet as he said: Edward’s face did not flicker an ounce of recognition.

  Overpowering all, of course, was the bridegroom himself. Dressed in a blue velvet doublet, so big that three men could have fitted into it, he loomed. Katherine thought that she had never seen anything so monstrous and wondered for a moment if she could bear to go on. But there was no escape. Feeling totally lost she stepped forward and the very next second her hand had been consumed within the King’s.

  Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had promoted Catherine Howard and then deserted her, conducted the ceremony, asking both respondents in turn to give their vows. Henry seemed jubilant, smiling broadly and shouting ‘Yea’, when asked if he would take Katherine as his wedded wife. This seemed so joyful and amusing that nobody noticed how white the new Queen’s cheeks turned as the wedding ring was slipped on.

  Now I am at his mercy, ran her thoughts. One false move and I could end as did my predecessor.

  She stared round the room blankly as all present made reverence to her. Could it be possible that she, born without title, plain Katherine Parr, was Queen of England? All she could think of in the welter of congratulation was that somewhere her greedy mother must be smiling like a cream-licking cat.

  ‘Your Grace, I greet you,’ said Henry, and almost lifted Katherine off her feet as he gave her a suffocating kiss. Only the fact that all the guests were looking stopped her from physically shuddering.

  Oh Tom, she thought, if only it could have been you.

  By the strangest coincidence, at that moment exactly Thomas dropped his wine cup on the floor of the Staple Hall in Calais and the contents spilled like blood.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said quietly. ‘I know it.’

  *

  The day wore on with much merriment. Princess Mary, happy for once, was laughing and drinking too much wine, while Elizabeth was pink and flushed.

  ‘You must go to bed soon,’ whispered her governess.

  But the girl would have none of it, running to her father and whirling a curtsey before him. ‘Oh please Your Grace, let me stay at the wedding feast a little longer. Mistress Champernowne says I must go to bed.’

  The King turned to his new Queen, laughing indulgently. ‘What say you, Kate? Shall the imp be allowed to stay on?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Katherine smiling faintly. ‘Let the Lady Elizabeth enjoy herself.’

  ‘Only when she has embraced you as stepmother,’ answered Henry, all joviality.

  For answer his daughter, having dropped a curtsey to Katherine equally as fine as that which she made to the King, climbed up level with the new Queen’s chair and, putting her arms round her neck, kissed her affectionately on the cheek.

  ‘Welcome, dear stepmother,’ she said.

  Katherine hugged her, almost painfully Elizabeth thought, and said, ‘I will do my best, I promise you.’

  Near her like that, Elizabeth could smell the new Queen’s essence, so different from the musky and exciting perfume which Anne Boleyn had worn. Just for a minute the girl closed her eyes and tried to imagine it was her mother she held. But it was impossible. The two women were entirely different.

  Elizabeth sighed very quietly, then said to her father, ‘Well, may I stay?’

  ‘Of course,’ he answered, patting Katherine’s hand. ‘Never let it be said, my girl, that you did not dance at my wedding.’

  So it was in this way that Elizabeth finally found herself caught up in a ritual called the bedding. By this time she had drunk far too much wine, as had everybody else, and seemed to float on a cloud. Yet the girl, not quite ten, found questions forming in her mind to which she did not, as yet, know the answers.

  The principle oddity seemed, to Elizabeth’s scholarly reasoning, the fact that all the ladies giggled as they decked her new stepmother, very pale-faced, in her nightclothes, when there was nothing funny about it. And why did all the gentlemen roar their approval, standing round her father, dressed in a nightrobe the size of a tent, when the new Queen was led in? And why did the Bishop bless the bed and ask for a fruitful union, which meant children?

  In some way all of these things must be connected but Elizabeth, at this point, could not guess what the link might be.

  ‘I think I will go to sleep now,’ she yawned to Katherine Champernowne as all the guests, including the Bishop, trooped from the King’s bedchamber in a merry, laughing group.

  ‘And about time too, my Lady,’ said her governess, who had been waiting for her in the ante-chamber.

  ‘But there are some things I want to ask you in the morning, Kat.’

  ‘Yes, my Lady,’ said Mistress Champernowne with a wry expression on her face. ‘I had a feeling there might be.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Before he went to sleep on that particular night in the autumn of 1543, Dr Zachary Howard, silently and privately, said a last farewell to his dead daughter. Watching the swaying lantern cast ever-changing patterns of shadow as the ship’s motion drew it this way and that, the astrologer had given long consideration to the real meaning of mourning the departed before he finally released Sapphira. For what right had the bereaved, he thought, to hold on to a spirit that longed to be free? And how could anyone, be they parent or partner, dwell on memory to the detriment of those left alive?

  For this to him seemed the crux of the issue. Whether one believed that death ended everything, or looked on it as a new beginning, there were still the living to consider. In his own case, Zachary had two fine sons and a young wife, also bearing their burden of grief. If he became changed, morose and depressed, the quality of their lives would suffer even further than it had already. The time had now come for his daughter to take her place as a beloved member of the family who was no longer present, rather than the subject of much misery and wretchedness.

  ‘Goodbye, my darling,’ he whispered into the darkness, the lantern now put out. ‘Go on your way.’

  Was it his imagination that she came to him in a rushing that stirred his hair and fluttered against his cheek? Did he really hear a joyous laugh before the cabin became silent again? Did a voice full of echoes breathe, ‘Farewell’? Afterwards Zachary was never certain but, whatever the case, the illusion comforted him and he fell asleep soundly, confident that when he returned to England he would lead his family back to the harmonious life they had enjoyed before Sapphira’s untimely end.

  He had been in Venice for some while, in consultation with the noble family of Grimani, for whom he had been casting predictions since Francesco Grimani had long ago discovered Zachary in Southampton, where the Venetian’s trading ships, loaded with cl
oths and spices, gold and gilt, had ridden richly at anchor. But now, with his task completed and purse full, the astrologer was on his way home, his agonising for a dead child over, his heart full of hope. Yet just as he fell asleep, soothed by his sense of fulfilment and the ship’s own particular lullaby, Zachary suffered a small pang of unease. A warning note sounded which he chose to ignore as he went into a deep and heavy sleep.

  The first thing to wake him some hours later was the change in the voice of the wind, which had risen from the song of a siren to a booming shout. Zachary reluctantly opened an eye, felt the pitch and toss of the vessel, and immediately rose to dress. He was too experienced a sailor to stay in his cabin, knowing that the best way to avoid sickness was to become one with the motion of the ship, riding the waves with the vessel. But once on deck he realised that sea-sickness was not his primary consideration, the situation having deteriorated rapidly and the Captain fighting to keep his vessel on course.

  They had left Venice yesterday morning in a fair wind and had made good progress through the Adriatic so that now they were turning round the foot of Italy towards Sicily. But in the openness of that sea a wild tempest was blowing, sending the boat away from the coastline and out into the Mediterranean. In the darkness, with no stars to chart their passage, it was still obvious that they were plunging off course.

  With great care Zachary made his way to where the Captain stood at the helm, grimly wrestling as the ship climbed the waves and then smacked into the troughs beneath.

  Without turning, the seaman said tersely, ‘You’d best get below, Doctor. This is no night for passengers to be out of their cabins.’

  ‘I prefer it up here,’ Zachary answered firmly. ‘I favour the sight of the sea to that of four walls.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But don’t go near the rail or you’ll see the ocean more closely than you’d wish.’

  ‘I’ll be careful, I promise.’

  And so he remained, braced on the heaving deck, until finally the ferocity of the wind abated a little and the Captain was able to leave his place at the wheel and ask his passenger to join him for a nip of the harsh, dark drink which he always kept in his cabin.