Kathryn had no idea what Mary spoke of. She followed haltingly, frowning. She’d heard there was a new queen—or at least she thought that was what the adult conversation around her tended to. Not that anyone explained too clearly, but everyone spoke of Queen Anne and the old Queen Catherine. Kathryn had always felt a little sad for Queen Catherine, because they shared a name. But everyone around her seemed pleased by Queen Anne’s rise, and Kathryn assumed they knew best.
But the truth was that none of this had mattered much to Kathryn. Kings and queens and the court had seemed a very distant thing. More important was moving with Father from lodging to less expensive lodging, until Father had married Dame Margaret and they had moved to her house. Shortly after that—perhaps at the same time—Father had been named comptroller of the king’s port of Calais and then Dame Margaret had got them clothes and sent them to see the duchess, and told Kathryn she was to behave and she would have oranges.
In Kathryn’s mind, it all muddled: The new queen and the change in her family circumstances; her father’s new job, and this seemingly disastrous being left behind among strangers. Her hands closed on the stuff of her skirt, which felt much too fine and unaccustomed, and made her let go in one startled movement. “My … cousin?”
“Lor!” Mary Tilney had turned away, but now turned back laughing, as they climbed stairs and entered yet another corridor, the beams overhead painted in blue and gold. “You mean you don’t know!”
“Queen Catherine?” Kathryn asked.
Mary laughed. “Fancy you not knowing.” She had a beauty mark on the corner of her mouth that waggled up and down with suppressed laughter, before she covered her mouth with her dainty hand. “Why! Queen Anne, of course! Her mother was a Howard, who married Thomas Boleyn.”
This idea so overwhelmed Kathryn that she kept quiet as they ran past open doors showing rooms decorated in a style that Kathryn had never seen, nor even dreamed of. There had been so many different houses in her life, starting with her mother’s comfortable but strictly regulated house, with the nursemaids and the servants and every child—Leigh and Howard alike—set in a proper schedule and constrained to do the proper things. Then there had been various houses and rooming houses, after her mother’s death, then the house of Dame Dorothy, till she died, then rooming houses again and now, just for a few weeks, there had been the home of her new stepmother, which was opulent but perhaps not as comfortable as Kathryn’s mother’s.
But this home was as different from that, as … as the tavern where they’d stopped for a bite of food on the way was from any home. This home, so far, had more rooms than any other home she’d ever been in, and each lavishly, invitingly furnished with cushions and painted furniture and …
Kathryn stopped at the open door to a large room, forgetting to follow Mary. She was conscious, though she did not devote much thought to it, that Mary had gone ahead, her steps retreating—then come back, steps approaching again. “Fie, what holds you?” Mary asked.
Kathryn was looking at a bright room with a broad window in whose embrasure a spacious window seat nestled, covered in many-colored silk cushions. Disposed around the seats were a harpsichord and lutes, polished and shining. In a corner of the room stood a harp, with a carved wood frame. Against the other wall, stood the pianoforte in polished walnut.
“Aye, come, Kathryn, what look you on so lost?”
“Is it …” Kathryn asked. “Is this where musicians come to play?” She couldn’t imagine where the duchess would sit, much less anyone else. But in Kathryn’s short life, one enjoyment stood out—even more than her love of oranges—and that was her love of music. When she’d been fortunate enough to listen to a good choir at church, she’d felt as if she could stay there forever. One of her maids had told her this was all heaven was—that there was a great choir, singing God’s glory forever. It made heaven a very-desired thing.
Mary laughed, amusement and indulgence in her laugh. “Ah, no, Kathryn. Sometimes we have musicians who play for Her Grace, but this is where the musicians come to teach us to play.”
“You learn to play?” Kathryn asked with amazement. Her whole life, though her brothers were given masters, there never seemed to be quite enough money to pay for little Kathryn’s lessons.
“We all do. And you will, too,” Mary said. “We are, after all, young ladies of quality, and playing well is part of the graces that will find us a husband or see us through in court.” With a sudden gasp, Mary added, “You’ll probably go to court, Kathryn, soon enough, to serve your cousin the queen.”
But the court and all its wonders were too distant a thought to Kathryn. Instead, she thought of learning music, and her heart sped in her chest, till it would seem as though it would break through. Her house—even when she lived with her mother—had never contained any of these musical instruments, not even a lute. She didn’t remember ever hearing her mother sing, so perhaps mother didn’t like music. Or perhaps there was more to it. Perhaps Mother hadn’t been able to afford a master for so many girls.
But Kathryn knew her voice was sweet. When she sang about the house, not even Dame Margaret bid her stop. And the idea of knowing how to accompany herself, how to make sweet sounds upon all those interesting instruments, buoyed her along on light feet, as Mary opened a tall oak door onto a vast room.
The room contained six beds, disposed about its walls, and it had mullioned windows, set with little squares and leaden strips. Through the windows, cold white light poured, lighting a scene of utter confusion.
There were dresses and caps tossed about everywhere, and what seemed like just colorful lengths of fabric thrown over the beds all around. Most of all, there were girls—more than ten of them, though Kathryn stopped counting at ten—all of them much older than Kathryn, talking and laughing and, some of them, sitting upon a bench by the fireplace sewing.
In one corner of the room, a girl stood, and a woman who looked much older than them was engaged in … doing something with fabric around her. Kathryn thought that the woman was a seamstress trying a dress on the girl, but only perhaps because she herself had a new dress made for her so recently.
As all the girls turned to look at her and Mary, silence fell in the room. The girl standing with the fabric around her turned also, to a sharp reproof from the older woman, “Now, Mistress Jane!”
This confirmed that the girl was having a dress fitted. Mistress Jane was a thin, pinched-face creature, and the velvet wrapped around her was burgundy and so rich that it made Kathryn stare in admiration. It seemed sad to waste it on Jane, who would more likely look even smaller and sourer within it.
Kathryn was thinking this as Mary giggled and said, “I give you her grace’s granddaughter, Mistress Kathryn Howard.”
Without thinking, without conscious effort, Kathryn curtseyed.
Like that, the noise resumed, and from the noise, many words emerged “So little!” “Granddaughter? But I thought Her Grace had only—” “Well, step-granddaughter, then.” “To live with us!” “Well, then, be nice to her.” “Oh, I will. Cousin to the queen and many favors in her giving.”
All of these brought peels of laughter, and the older girls approached, surrounding Kathryn, circling her about, pulling her chin up to look at her face.
Mary stood aside through all of this, looking exactly—Kathryn thought—like a puppeteer, who had once come to their house when her mother was still living. The man had made many dolls dance and fight upon the stage, and, afterward, while the room applauded, he’d stayed aside with a satisfied smile upon his face.
Now there was a like smile on Mary’s face. That is, until the older woman came from the corner of the room and stood there, looking at them all with her hands on her hips. “Well,” she said, and the way she said it, it was a judgment on all of them and perhaps on Kathryn most of all. “Is she to go to London with us then, on the morrow?”
Mary’s smile disappeared. She frowned, the sort of frown people gave when they were thinking deeply. �
�Well, I vow,” she said. “I did not ask, but I don’t see how not, for no one of quality is staying here, and surely the duchess wouldn’t leave her granddaughter to the cleaning servants and the stable hands.”
The seamstress made a sound that signified as clearly as if she’d said the words that the duchess might well do anything and that this one servant had no high opinion of her mistress. She primmed her small lips. “I don’t suppose, Mistress Tilney, that Mistress Howard has brought a trousseau with her or that you’ve been put in charge of her gowns.”
“Well, no,” Mary said. “I’ve not–”
“Did you bring gowns, Mistress Howard?” the woman asked.
And because she sounded exactly like Dame Margaret, Kathryn heard a quiver in her voice as she said, “No, an’ it please you. This is the only good gown I have, and Dame Margaret had it made, because she said everything else I have is rags and tatters, not fit for a beggar.”
“Well, an’ it not please me,” the seamstress said, setting off a round of giggles amid the girls. “And I warrant Her Grace will never give it a thought, but a Howard and the cousin of the Queen cannot go to the festivities in that way. You, Mistress Bulmer, and you, Mistress Tilney, and any other of you who have outgrown gowns recently, bring them to me. I see I shall not sleep tonight.”
Before Kathryn quite knew what was forward, she was set in the corner of the room where the light from the windows fell stronger, and the woman was draping her in much too large gowns and marking alterations with chalk and needle and thread. The other girls gathered around and watched and made suggestions, even while the seamstress muttered under her breath about the horrors of such a noble girl being dressed in hand-me-downs, and seemed to justify herself to someone invisible by saying that it was impossible for her to do but as she did.
“Oh, don’t fuss,” one of the girls finally told the seamstress. “No one will know they’re hand-me-downs, you do the thing so cleverly.” She looked Kathryn over with bright blue eyes that sparkled with amusement. “And she looks so well in your confections. She’s a very pretty child.”
While Kathryn blushed with pleasure, another girl gave her a sweet. “Here, Kathryn,” she said. And stepped back and said, with laughing voice. “You’re very beautiful, Mistress Howard. I vow you’ll get yourself a great and brilliant match as soon as you’re grown, and make us all insane with jealousy.”
This caused all the girls to laugh.
Kathryn chewed her sweet in confusion, wondering if they were making fun of her or simply very happy girls. But when Mary Tilney put a hand on Kathryn’s shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine with us, Kathryn, we’ll look after you,” she had no reason doubt them.
Chapter Three
Kathryn felt as though she were living in a tale like gypsies sometimes told on the street corner for a coin or two. Or like players enacted in inns, or even at church at Christmas, with angels and maidens dressed all in shimmery fabric, all speaking lines very prettily.
Kathryn had been to London before, but it had never been like this or looked like this, and she had to think it must be a dream. This idea seemed all the more likely because of the travel in the carriage from Horsham, with all the girls laughing and singing and eating many good things. The carriage was soft and inside the seats were comfortable, quite a change from traveling to Horsham with her father, on horseback. Not that she’d complained of being held in front of him in the saddle, but this was so much better. She’d slept and wakened and slept again. And then she’d entered a magical land.
First there was Her Grace’s palace at Lambeth, across the river from Greenwich Palace. The palace of the king himself.
Her Grace’s home at Lambeth made Horsham look pedestrian and tiny. And then there was London itself. Kathryn had seen London before—had been in London before, between cheap house and dilapidated hostelry, but she had never seen London like this. The city, entire, was transformed as though by the hand of a magical power.
That first trip was well before the coronation of her cousin Anne, whom she’d never seen but to whom she’d become very attached all the same. A queen. My cousin, the queen.
In her mind, Anne wore gold and jewels, a pretty crown sparkling upon her head, ermine and furs and all the things Kathryn had heard about but had rarely seen and certainly never owned. Kathryn wanted Anne to be everything that Kathryn had ever dreamed a queen might be. By now, she’d heard so much about Anne, whom the king had loved, unavailing, for years on end, that she felt as if she knew her cousin, as if her cousin’s coronation was the attainment of Kathryn’s own dreams. And the excitement in the city was scarcely less than her own.
Her Grace’s Lambeth residence sat across the River Thames from Greenwich Palace. The river itself did not thrill Kathryn, who had seen it before and knew that the water could stink, particularly on a hot summer day, and that the noblemen on barges often held a hollowed out orange filled with spices and other scents to protect themselves from the ill humors of the river.
But even the river seemed milder now. Every day, from the time Kathryn arrived, new barges appeared on the Thames, all splendidly decorated, all illuminated at night with luminaries. From these barges, as the darkness fell, came the sounds of songs and drinking, though Mary Tilney and her other new friends told Kathryn that wasn’t part of the coronation pageant, yet. “Just the common folks, who guard the barges,” they said. “Amusing themselves. Look, you, if you think this is grand, you shall be all astounded when the pageants start.”
They said it and giggled, and their eyes sparkled. The excitement within the house matched the excitement outside. All the girls were deciding which clothes they should wear for the coronation, dreaming of all the esquires, the knights, even the great lords who would be coming to town for the festivities. And now they blushed, and now they sighed, and they paraded about in their clothes and praised each other’s looks or suggested perhaps a little change. They braided each other’s hair, and tried coifs and bonnets.
Absent from all this was the duchess, which seemed to Kathryn passing strange. “Why come she not?” she asked Mary Tilney while Mary carefully braided Kathryn’s hair two days after they arrived to town. “Care she not how I do? If she’s my grandmother—”
“Hush, girl,” Mary Tilney said. “And do not move, or your hair shall be all askew.” She tugged gently on Kathryn’s auburn hair, not enough to truly hurt but enough to make her mind. “Her Grace is busy with her own preparations, for you must know that she was called to hold up Queen Anne’s train during her coronation. You can see how important that is, and how she must make sure she disgraces neither her name nor her family, neither her dignity nor the queen’s.”
Kathryn nodded, impressed, and earned another light hair pull for it. “Be still, or I cannot make you look pretty for the coronation. Do you not wish to look pretty for the coronation?”
The girl so very much wished it that she lost herself in a reverie, where it was herself holding the royal train, freighted with jewels and hemmed with ermine. In her little dream everyone, from the highest in the land to the lowest, bowed not just to Queen Anne—a shadowy figure who, in Kathryn’s imagination, looked just like a grown up Kathryn—but to Kathryn herself, the queen’s most beloved cousin.
She was awakened from this when one of the girls—a Dorothy Barwick, who was somewhat older than the rest—came running into their chamber, “Why are you here?” she asked, and before either of the girls could answer. “Oh, mind that not. Make haste, make haste, there’s the queen’s barge coming up the river to the Tower, and what a sight that is to see.”
“To the Tower?” Kathryn asked, unable to move, even as Mary Tilney let go of her hair and got up in a rush. Mary, already three steps away, turned, even while Kathryn looked up at her. Kathryn knew she must look pale, for she had felt the blood leave her face, as she stood there, staring. “But—” Even such as she—and she knew she was a provincial with little knowledge of the world—knew that the Tower was where traito
rs went and people who had conspired against the king’s majesty.
She remembered her father and mother talking about someone who had gone to the Tower and then, shortly thereafter, as was expected, had been beheaded. She looked at Mary, while the pretty tower of dreams she’d built in her head came tumbling to the ground. “What has the queen done, to go to the Tower? How did she lose the king’s love?”
For a moment, Mary stared at Kathryn looking quite blank, and then a grin spread across her oval face. “Oh, Kathryn, you goose. No, it is not that the king no longer loves the queen. On the contrary, it is of his great and reverent love for her that she goes to the Tower. For she must spend the night there, before her own coronation. Why, he’s even making sixty knights of the bath, which is only done when a king or queen is crowned.”
“Oh,” Kathryn said, and her resistance melting, she allowed herself to be pulled out of the door of their sleeping chambers—which were much like the ones at Horsham, only with more gilding on the ceiling and more vibrantly painted walls, and down the hallway, to a room on the opposite side, facing the river.
The mullioned windows had been thrown open, allowing the mild May air to flow in, full of the smells of the city—smoke and animals and people—but also of the scents of wine and roasting meat, of flowers and perfume.
The river on that night was even more of a fairyland than before. Instead of the disordered, merry singing, there was more organized music that sounded much like what Kathryn was used to hearing in church, only perhaps merrier.
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