by Deryn Lake
Always within calling distance were her two charges; the ivory-faced Elizabeth, glittering and withdrawn, more introverted than before to Katherine, though still as fierce and boisterous with the others; the gentle Jane Grey, daughter of the Marquess of Dorset and Frances Brandon, whose mother had been Henry VIII’s sister. It was an unwritten understanding that Jane only remained with Katherine, now that the Queen had married Lord Seymour, to be groomed as a bride for her cousin King Edward. Thomas, in fact, had been given the girl as ward in exchange for a fee which he was to pay Lord Dorset on the signing of a marriage contract between Jane and Edward. Katherine did not like to think about this arrangement too much, smacking as it did of the sale of the child by her father.
For these days she felt drawn to Jane, who sympathised with Katherine’s pregnancy, laying her hand on the Queen’s extending belly to see if the infant therein was dancing, whereas Elizabeth would have none of it, merely extending the normal courtesies and leaving the matter there. She seemed to have scant interest in the ‘little knave’ as Tom and Katherine had lovingly nicknamed the unborn child.
Though the weather was still cold, Katherine walked a great deal, admiring the chilling bravery of the snowdrops, exclaiming at the brilliant colours of the crocuses in the woods. Somehow they reminded her of Elizabeth who was dressing resplendently at present, choosing all the vivid purples and whites of flowers to show off the colour of her extraordinary hair.
Another routine was to visit chapel where twice a day prayers were said for the Queen’s safe delivery. Since taking up residence in Sudeley, Katherine had surrounded herself with those learned clerics who practised the reformed religion, her chaplain being the spiritual leader, Miles Coverdale. She punctiliously attended both services, her cheerful song changed to an anthem, and though Jane accompanied Katherine to both, Elizabeth came only to one and Thomas to none.
‘I pray privately,’ he had answered when Katherine had remonstrated with him. ‘You’ve enough people to talk to God for you without me.’
There had been no arguing, for he would never take her seriously when she was angry, instead winking a blue eye and coming after her like a grizzly bear, roaring, with outstretched arms ready to hug her. Then he would put his lips to her belly and kiss the little knave. Katherine considered him the most loving and lovable man in the world, his arrant scampishness one of his most endearing qualities.
It was at times like this that she resented the sudden intrusion of Elizabeth, whose long pale face would appear at the door and put an end to the Queen’s loveplay. The thought that the girl was doing it on purpose had crossed Katherine’s mind more than once, and she had remembered the dark eyes of Anne Boleyn, similar to Elizabeth’s in many ways, and how they would slant and stare at whoever it was she wanted to attract, just as Elizabeth’s did at Thomas. A strange suspicion began to grow like a canker right at the very back of Katherine’s mind.
The flowers in the woods changed to daffodils and the ancient trees were full of nesting birds. Katherine, walking more than ever now the weather was warmer, thought she had never enjoyed anything as much as the change of seasons at the castle. The month of her arrival had seen snowflakes fall and she had looked out of the magnificent oriel window in the medieval banqueting hall, heavily restored under her direction, and seen the miracle of snow lying beneath ancient castle walls. Within it had been warm, the fire blazing in the vast grate, and half closing her eyes Katherine had pretended she had gone back in time; that her huge retinue, all chattering and laughing like monkeys, were dressed in earlier clothes, had fought at Agincourt, had loved and cursed and sweated in another age.
That fancy had taken her again when the woods had borne their fine tracery of spring and she had heard the first cuckoo give his call. Had other women, budding with child, heard that same sweet, silly sound? Did all time go round and round in a never-ending circle?
These thoughts re-echoed on Passion Sunday, the fifth in Lent as Easter was late, when Mary Odell, one of Katherine’s favourite and closest ladies, insisted on making Passion Dock pudding, a tradition centuries old. In a flurry of excitement all the younger girls rushed out to pick dock leaves and enjoin the gardeners to pull up nettles, while Katherine sat in the April sunshine watching them, her hand resting on her ripening body. She was just over three months pregnant and so far the little knave had not moved, a disappointment to Jane Grey who longed for that moment to happen.
As the Queen sat enjoying the warmth in her splendid knot garden, Lady Tyrwhit, one of the multitude of Katherine’s stepdaughters who had now come into her service, went through the yew walk, accompanied by Elizabeth, and a snatch of their conversation drifted towards the Queen.
‘… speak my mind whoever you might be,’ Lady Tyrwhit was saying.
‘… report you to the Queen Dowager for the common upstart you are,’ came Elizabeth’s angry reply.
Katherine sat upright on her stone seat, aware that they could not see her unless she stood, and suddenly, horribly, curious.
‘I’ve watched you,’ Lady Tyrwhit went on. ‘I’ve watched you look at him. You’re a disgrace, Madam.’
‘How dare you,’ the girl answered furiously. ‘I am a Princess of the Blood and I will not be spoken to like that.’
‘I care nothing,’ Lady Tyrwhit said roundly. ‘Your behaviour is a scandal, a …’
They were going out of earshot and Katherine was left in turmoil. Who was this man at whom Elizabeth was supposed to gaze so scandalously? And then a memory came back to the Queen, a memory of a silly incident in the garden at Hanworth, when Elizabeth for some childish reason of her own had insisted on wearing a black dress.
‘You look terrible in that abomination,’ Tom had said, and had chased the girl with a pair of shears snatched from a gardener, until she had sought refuge in Katherine’s arms, though Tom, nothing daunted, had cut the offending garment off her back. Elizabeth, squirming and squealing, had stood in her underwear and given him such a look when he had finished, a look which Katherine would never forget. Everything had been in it; hatred for ruining her clothes, adoration for being the reprehensible rake he was, and something else. At the time the Queen had been too preoccupied to pursue it further but now she recognised exactly what else had been present. That child, that girl of thirteen, had looked at Katherine’s husband with lust.
The Queen went cold in the sunshine. How could she have been such a fool? She herself had been married at thirteen; beaten and raped, but married. She had made the great mistake of thinking Elizabeth a child when all the time a woman stood there, a thin boyish woman admittedly, but still a woman.
‘Oh my God!’ said Katherine aloud.
There was a distant shout and Mary Odell came running into the garden, an apron held up in front of her full of dock leaves.
‘Oh Your Grace,’ she said, panting straight up to the Queen and dropping a curtsey, ‘it’s been such fun. Look, we’ve gathered masses of leaves. Will you come to the kitchens and help us prepare?’
Katherine stood up slowly, suddenly feeling her age. She was in her thirty-fifth year, Elizabeth in her fifteenth; the gap between them yawned like a black-mouthed chasm.
‘And what is this pudding supposed to do once it is baked?’ she asked with a little laugh. ‘Does it contain the secret of eternal youth?’
Mary Odell flashed a smile, sunny as summer. ‘It makes your true love faithful if he eats some too.’
‘Then save a piece for the Lord Admiral,’ answered Katherine, without thinking.
Mary looked at her ingenuously. ‘I should not have thought he would need it, Madam.’
‘No?’ said the Queen thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps you are right Mary. Perhaps you are right after all.’
*
Rather thankfully Edward, King of England, looked at the line of feet spread out before him, considered the fact that he was ten years old, and gave a wry smile. He was at St Paul’s and it was Maundy Thursday, and in memory of Christ washing the fee
t of his disciples at the Last Supper, it was tradition that the monarch should bathe the feet of as many paupers as he had years of age.
Only ten for me, thought Edward gleefully. But I’ll wager the Lord Protector takes all day to do his!
For people other than the King were also involved in this ceremony, bishops and great personages must do likewise, and the Duke of Somerset, not in his best clothes Edward noted with amusement, was next in line.
Throughout most of last year and during this as well, the boy-King’s irritation with the Seymour brothers had been rankling like a prickle in his shoe. Much as he wanted to have goodwill towards them, much as he wanted to be fair, to like them both equally, Edward was finding it more and more difficult.
It now seemed reasonably clear to the King that Uncle Thomas, who was more liberal than ever with sums of pocket money, was anxious to limit the powers of Uncle Edward, who was not. Only last November the Admiral had come to the King with a draft bill suggesting that Thomas should become Governor of the King’s Person, a separate entity from the Protector. But the King had been in no mood to accept. The Duke of Somerset, stingy though he may be, had fought gallantly in Scotland during the summer, when the militant Scotsmen, aided by their French allies, refused to honour a treaty which bound their baby Queen Mary in marriage to Edward Tudor. As a result it had not seemed right to the boy to treat the hero Protector in a cavalier manner. The Lord Admiral had had his first taste of the King’s stubborness as Edward had firmly said, ‘No.’
Since that time the King knew, quite certainly, that the Admiral had been attempting to get various bills through the Lords limiting the Protector’s power. And then there was the vexed question of the Queen Dowager’s jewels, the dispute over which still dragged on. Edward had sat at his desk with all its lovely secret compartments full of his own special things, in the room known as The Kynge’s Secret Studie, and written his journal and quietly seethed.
‘After all I am King,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I may be only ten years old but it doesn’t stop me being King.’
If he had his way, Edward thought, he would have punished both the Seymour brothers for nagging him and then magnanimously forgiven them on a promise they would behave better in future.
Now he braced himself, looking at the feet again, and went on his knees on the carpets and cushions specially set down for him. Sighing inaudibly, Edward picked up the first foot — which had already been washed three times before by a laundress, the sub-almoner and the almoner — and shoved it into a basin of warm water and sweet flowers.
‘God bless the King’s Highness,’ said a quavery voice.
‘May the blessing of Christ be with you,’ answered Edward stoically, dunking the foot in and out of several more basins, before wiping it, crossing it and kissing it. Only one foot per pauper, God be praised, he thought but all the while he kept on what he called his ‘holy’ face, smiling seraphically at the Lord Protector who watched with approval.
If only, thought Edward, plunging fiercely at some poor fellow’s heel, those two could be combined into one person, open-handed and amusing but honourable and serious as well. Then I would have something like a really decent uncle.
*
The Lord Admiral returned to his stately domain on the very day that his wife, as Dowager Queen, bathed the feet of the poor of Winchcombe, kneeling heavily on her supporting cushions and repeating the action thirty-four times. Arriving too late for the ceremony Thomas nonetheless escorted her from the chapel, built in the castle grounds, and lectured her severely on doing too much, saying that she could have excused herself the ordeal on the grounds of being with child.
‘But they enjoy it so, Tom. And I am not far advanced, after all.’
‘Has the little knave moved yet?’
‘No, but I expect him to do so daily.’
That evening all the household dined in the ancient Banqueting Hall on a feast of fish, it being a fast until Saturday when Eastertide Tansies, a delicacy of cream, eggs and juice of spinach, would be served. Tomorrow, of course, the bakers would be up before dawn in the castle kitchens, preparing hot cross buns in memory of the kindly woman who had offered Christ a loaf on his way to Calvary. Then the household, even Thomas, would go to chapel to pray for their immortal souls.
‘You are very quiet, pretty Kate,’ said Thomas, as the meal finally done, he got into bed beside her in their beautiful room in the east wing. ‘You should not have taken part in the ceremony, I do not think it was good for you.’
She stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment or two and then, quite suddenly, decided to take the bull by the horns.
‘It is not that I am tired, Thomas, it is more that I am worried.’
He propped himself on one elbow, staring at her with concern. ‘What about?’
‘Elizabeth,’ answered Katherine firmly.
Did she imagine it or was there a fraction of a second’s pause before he repeated, ‘Elizabeth? Why?’
‘Because I think she’s in love and I think it is with you.’
‘Oh rubbish,’ Tom answered and fell back on the pillows, grinning.
‘Treat it as such if you like,’ Katherine continued with acerbity, ‘but I think all that teasing when we lived in the Dower House did no good. I believe she conceived some kind of passion for you.’
‘Really?’ Tom was looking at her with interest and the Queen was suddenly furious.
‘I knew it would make you vainer than ever. I knew I should say nothing. But you asked me and, for once, I told the truth.’
‘What do you mean, for once? I thought you were always truthful.’
Fatigue, anxiety, pregnancy, were suddenly all too much and Katherine burst into tears, turning her back on her husband and sobbing into the pillow.
‘Listen,’ said Thomas calmly, not touching her but somehow tremendously close, ‘you have nothing to fear. I love you, Kate, and I always will. If some silly slut of a girl gets a fixation about me it is not my fault. The little bitch can leave here tomorrow as far as I’m concerned. But I can see that the teasing may have done harm and for that I apologise.’
He did not make a move, waiting for her to roll over into his arms which, after a second or two, Katherine did.
‘Do you really love me?’
‘Till death,’ he answered solemnly.
Katherine shivered. ‘I pray that that is many years hence.’
‘Amen indeed,’ said Lord Seymour and held her as tight against him as he dared without making uncomfortable the growing life within.
On Easter Sunday, with the rising sun dancing for joy at the Resurrection, that life finally moved of its own volition. Katherine, walking hand-in-hand with her husband through the yew walk, gave a cry and turned to him, her eyes shining, her face aglow.
‘Oh Thomas, the little knave has moved. He has come to life. What a wonderful omen on Easter Day.’
Katherine had never seen her husband weep before, did not know the dashing Lord Admiral, that fine, fearless blackguard, was capable of such emotion. But now fierce tears sprang into his eyes and going on one knee before her he kissed the Queen’s body where the baby dwelled.
‘I love you, Katherine,’ he said, almost harshly. ‘It is you who have changed my entire life. I lay it at your feet.’
It was one of the most profound moments they had ever shared in a relationship that had been charged from its very beginning, and putting her hands to cup Tom’s face, Katherine wept with him, mingling their joyful tears. It was just then, looming against the midday sun, her shadow thrown before her, that Elizabeth appeared at the far end of the yew walk, sinister and omnipresent, a stark black shape.
Tom sprang up and uttered one of the terrible oaths for which he was renowned. ‘God’s testicles, what does she want?’
His violent reaction frightened Katherine more than the sight of the girl herself. Nobody indifferent, nobody who did not care, would be so angry.
He craves her, she thought, and wonde
red if she was going to faint.
For a moment or two Elizabeth could be seen to hesitate and then with that determination which was already a characteristic, started to walk towards the Admiral and his wife with a normal but measured tread. She drew alongside and swept the most incredible curtsey, deep to the ground, her head bowed so as not to gaze at them.
‘Good day, Your Grace. Good day, my Lord,’ she said, then went on her way without looking back.
Thomas stared after her. ‘How dare she,’ he said. ‘I’ll string her up.’
‘But she did nothing,’ protested Katherine.
‘That’s just the point,’ answered the Admiral furiously. ‘That creature can make an ordinary greeting seem an insult.’
‘I think,’ said the Queen, very slowly, ‘that you are allowing the Princess Elizabeth to affect you deeply.’
*
Though the days between Easter and Whitsun grew cooler in temperature it now seemed that Sudeley Castle and its principal occupants were at fever pitch. At night, though she pretended to sleep, Katherine could hear Thomas tossing and turning as if he were ill. While in her apartments, though only Kat Ashley was aware of it, Elizabeth whimpered like a wounded animal. Unhealthy forces were at work and the air was alive with longings and whisperings.
It was as if some enormous wound was festering, coming to a terrible head, and that only lancing could dispel the poison that pervaded every room, every inch of the gardens and grounds. The Queen felt there was no more serenity, no peace anywhere, except in the chapel. And she knelt there long hours, almost avoiding the house and the two people in it who were causing her such anguish.
The end was almost a relief; the boil burst; the venom was at last allowed to drain away. In that same yew walk, hidden from the castle and from onlookers, Elizabeth and Thomas, who had for days been stalking round each other like two battle-ready cats, came accidentally but intentionally, face to face.
‘Right, young lady,’ said Lord Seymour without preamble. ‘I have words to say to you.’