No Will But His

by Hoyt, Sarah A.

  It was so unexpected that Kathryn failed to understand it. Only when some lady had done something wrong was she sent away from the palace, usually back to her family. What had she done, then? Had her answer to him been the wrong one? She didn’t believe so, and when she looked at him, she found him smiling. But why would he be sending her away, then?

  “Have I done aught,” she asked, “to displease Your Majesty?”

  He smiled. “No, Mistress Howard. You have pleased me greatly. But I would enjoin you to go down river a while and to lodge with your uncle Norfolk. Tomorrow I shall send for him and ask him to make suitable apartments ready for you. It is best, for propriety’s sake, that you be removed from the queen and from the palace and from my presence all together. Norfolk will do the thing prettily.”

  Her face must have shown her confusion, for his great big hand came forth and caressed her cheek. “Fear not, my moppet, that you have to be without me for very long. This shall not happen. I will come visit that you might play me your lullabies. But now, go you to bed and dream pretty dreams, my Kathryn.”

  Kathryn had gone from the chamber, not sure whether she was on her feet or on her head. Out in the hallway, Jane got close to her and whispered, “Kathryn, did he ask you … does he wish you to become his mistress?”

  Kathryn shook her head. “No. It is all very strange, but … I think he means to have a divorce. He said he means to marry me. Surely,” she said, thinking of the foreign lady with the sweet smile, “surely he can’t mean to have her executed, can he? For she hasn’t done anything.”

  “No, surely not,” Jane said. “It’s not just that she’s innocent,” Jane said, in the tone of one who didn’t put much trust in innocence itself as a protection from the king’s wrath, “but that her brother is a prince abroad. The king would not want to set himself wrong with the protestant princes of Germany.”

  “No,” Kathryn said, and was almost sure that she said right. “He asked if he were free, would I marry him. But … why would he have me removed from the palace?” she asked in confusion.

  “Oh, that much is clear,” Jane said. “It is that if he means to marry you, he means that not even a suspicion of scandal should attach to you.”

  “But …” Kathryn said. In her mind there was her affair with Manox, of which the duchess had told her all the maids knew, and then her much worse affair with Dereham, and what would people say if she became queen. But then she thought that if she became queen the king’s own majesty would be wrapped up in her virtue. If he loved her well … If he loved her well, surely he would not believe anyone who besmirched her. Nor would he let anyone speak about her honor. Certainly not if she were the mother of his child.

  Sure, he had Anne Boleyn executed, but—Kathryn thought, having listened to people in the palace—he’d had Anne Boleyn executed not because he believed she had been unfaithful, though he might in fact have believed it, but because he had found it impossible to live with her. She’d been by turns demanding and commanding, and Henry wouldn’t like that, not with all his power, to find himself submitting to a woman.

  No. Kathryn must do this, and of a certain surety she saw no way out of it. In fact she was sure her grandmother, and almost everyone she knew would think Kathryn a great zany for even considering escaping becoming queen. If Kathryn was to do this, then let it be that she was the mildest and sweetest of wives, ever ready to bend to his will, treating Harry without the crown as though he were Harry with the crown, and making him—what was it that the duchess had told her, so many years ago—making him believe he was her king, her sovereign deity, and that she existed only for him.

  “He wants sweetness,” she said, hoping that her words would make it so, and when Jane didn’t answer but only looked at her with wide eyes, she added. “It is funny, you know, for so many years ago, in the dormitory at Horsham, we were playing this game with bits of lace, throwing it on the ground to form the name of the man we’d marry. Just a silly game. And my bit of lace formed Henry.”

  Jane was quiet a long time, then sighed. “Yes. I had a portent like that once.” But the way she spoke and the way she looked ahead as though at horrors untold … Kathryn couldn’t find the power in her to ask her what she meant by that.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “My dear, dear Kathryn,” the dowager duchess said. She was waiting in the duke’s palace in the very sumptuous apartments set aside for Kathryn. “I always knew how it would be.”

  She stood in the middle of the painted rooms, which were hung all over with precious embroidery and extended both hands to Kathryn while the stick fell, unheeded from her hand to the floor. Kathryn grasped her grandmother’s hands and curtseyed prettily. The hands felt papery, dry, and cool under her own, but the duchess laughed. “I knew that no man could see you and resist you. You have a look of her, my dear. That you do. And though it went badly in the end, she was the great love of his life, you mark my words. He has missed her terribly since she has gone.

  “They say that right after this sham marriage of his, her daughter, dear little Elizabeth wrote to Queen Anne, if such ye call her, and told her she would be glad to come to court and meet her new mother, the king ordered Cramner write to Elizabeth and tell her that she had a mother so different as to this one that she had no business at court and this one was not mother of hers and that”—she gave Kathryn an intent glance—“I will tell you, didn’t mean he thought that this present creature was better than our Anne.”

  Kathryn nodded. She felt it an ill omen that on this day they should be talking of her cousin, who had walked the same path and married the same king. She resisted an impulse to cross herself in order to ward off Anne Boleyn’s sad fate. “The king has been all that’s kind to me, madam,” she said. “And His Majesty’s attention to me has been like the sun coming out on an overcast day and transforming everything.”

  The duchess smiled. “He has been very kind to all Howards. Your uncle Norfolk is very pleased with you, my dear. For though his son tried to convince Norfolk’s daughter to catch the king’s fancy and be his mistress, she said she would have none. Which, mark my words, is just as well, for the girl has no spirit, and mistress is the most she could aspire to, only to be discarded like Bessie Blount. But you … you my dear have a fire that can’t be denied, and I shall see you yet wear the crown. I hope to bear your train at your coronation, just as I bore your cousin’s once.”

  Kathryn nodded. Again the ill omen. She clasped her little head in a fist and claimed tiredness to be allowed to lie down upon the bed in these most luxurious apartments. She had a feather mattress, as she’d never enjoyed before, and a featherbed and feather eiderdown. Lying amid it all, she felt as if she were in a cloud in heaven, dreaming.

  Lying down was, however, the only way she could avoid the attention of everyone in the household. She could never understand how many servants had been assigned to her. It seemed every time she turned around there was a new one, prostrate on her knees, offering wine or ale, or else water to wash her hands, oranges, grapes, and all manner of good things.

  Someone was always standing by in case she found her bed too hot or too cold, desired her fire built up or cool rose water brought up to bathe her forehead and wrists.

  Lying down was the only way she could escape them all. Lying down and closing her eyes. Very often, she found herself between imagination and dream seeing herself as a little girl on London streets, walking with Thomas Culpepper, who made sure that no one molested her or hurt her.

  She walked through the streets again, but this time when she caught a glimpse of the queen in procession between the Tower and the place where she would be crowned, the face that peeked at her from beneath the hood ornamented with fur was her own

  This was usually when she woke up screaming, panting, her forehead breaking out in sweat, her hands shaking.

  This had just happened on her second week in the house, when she found a maid kneeling by her bed, extending her a folded paper. She looked a
t the maid, as though the maid had taken leave of her senses, then tried to collect her own memory. Had she sent for a paper? She was sure she hadn’t.

  Then, her eyes clearing from their sleep confusion, she realized that the paper was folded over and that it bore a melted seal upon it.

  She extended her hand for it and took it, and broke the seal and read. It came from Joan Bulmer. She’d married a small lord with a manor in the north. She recalled herself to Kathryn’s attention by reminding her that she was used to serving as Kathryn’s secretary—which was true for the very few letters that Kathryn had need of writing while she lived at Lambeth. One or two of them to Dereham, she recalled with a shiver. And though Anne said nothing at all in those letters that could be considered dangerous, she was sure that Joan alluded to the deeper relationship that the whole dormitory knew existed between her and Dereham when she said that she had kept Kathryn’s secrets and had no intention of divulging them.

  With difficulty for, though she read better than she wrote, Kathryn hadn’t often read very much, Kathryn looked at the rest of the letter. It seemed Joan had found herself living with a man she liked not and who exerted over her that full power a husband could have over his wife.

  She wanted away from him and his rough treatment. She begged Kathryn, of her kind mercy, to make her one of her maids and bring her to London. “For it is said that the king means to put you in that position from which he is now endeavoring to remove the foreigner. And if it be so and if he do good things for you, I hope you will remember your secretary and devoted friend, Joan Bulmer.”

  Of all the girls in the dormitory, Kathryn had loved Joan the least. She suspected that Joan had been an accomplice of Manox’s in getting the letter about Dereham to the duchess. And yet, that had ended well, had it not? And perhaps Joan Bulmer was not such a bad sort. She had after all been upset that she’d been supplanted by Kathryn in Dereham’s affections. And then she’d had the bad luck to make an awful marriage.

  If Kathryn received her with kindness, surely she’d see that Kathryn was her true friend and she herself would deal well with Kathryn. Surely.

  “Bring me pen and paper,” she told the servant. “And ink and sand.”

  Before the words were well out of her hand, the objects were presented to her. She took them in her shaking hand and wrote a reply.

  It was only a few words for, secretary or not, Kathryn had never found much use in enmeshing herself in excessive wordage. She told Joan if such came to pass and if it were her great good fortune to receive such bounty from His Majesty, then she would make sure to summon Joan to court and to her own household.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The king came in a small rowboat, rowed by two of his servants, crossing the silent river in the dead of night, and was received in estate at Norfolk House. There were dainties and card games and talk, but most of all there was Kathryn and her music.

  With great care and continuous vigilance, the duchess tried to prepare the way. “We’ll leave you alone as much as we can, but not alone in the room, for we’ll not want Harry taking advantage, will we? We’ll leave you alone with him, though, to talk privy like. Be ye always kind and careful with him, and remember that he is too old to enjoy argumentation and disputes.” She stopped for a moment, as though thinking something over. “If indeed he ever enjoyed it, which I doubt. I think Anne managed to cajole him into it, but he did not really like it, if you take my meaning, much less enjoy it.

  “No, best you pattern yourself after Jane Seymour, whey-faced though she might have been. But she obeyed him in all things, and by obeying him, she attached his affections true and proper, though her face was nothing to recommend her. An’ if she had lived,” the duchess said, “she would have been regent after his death. He had already made documents to that intent. You do that, too, my dear, and only think, he has not very long to live.”

  Kathryn didn’t like it when her grandmother spoke of the king’s advanced age or that, for sure, he could not be long for this Earth. She knew this was true, or suspected it might be. And, of course, part of her mind knew she was marrying him because he was the king. Were it not for that, she would have at least thought of saying no.

  But marriage was all a chance, and she’d drawn the king of England, and she’d endeavor to serve him as her true master. She did not want to think of widowhood.

  The first time the duchess spoke like this, though, Kathryn said, “Madam, you said I was to go to court to become polished, so I might marry my cousin Thomas Culpepper who was court raised. Was it all then a ruse?”

  The duchess had looked at her puzzled. “No, oh, no. We were in the midst of negotiations for that marriage, only we realized what way the wind was likely to blow and you know, my dear, common men—or women—who stand in the way of royal caprice get blown to pieces and nothing remains of them. Best then to set our sails so they’re full of royal favor.”

  The Duchess had patted her, and left her to entertain the king with her music. They spoke very little, when they spoke. The king did not seem to know what might interest her, and force, she did not know what might interest the king.

  Music was the only thing she knew that they had in common, only, sometimes, at the duchess’s suggestion, she and some of the other girls practiced their dances for the king’s amusement. But that was all.

  Two weeks after she’d left the palace, and when Kathryn was starting to suspect she’d dreamed the king’s declaration and his question, Henry had approached her, when she was still sitting at the virginal, after playing.

  As though of a common accord, the Duke of Norfolk, his wife, the dowager, and all who were standing about attending on them moved to the other end of the room.

  “The thing is done,” the king said. “And now, will ye be my wife, Kathryn?”

  “The thing?” Kathryn felt a surge of panic, and took her hand to her throat. The way the king said it, it seemed to her that Anne of Cleves would now be lying dead. Dead to make her way for Kathryn. How odd it was that he had got rid of Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn and now …

  “Divorce,” he said. “Oh, do not look so scared. She agreed to it all and made the thing very easy, indeed. I promised her four thousand pounds in stipend every year, three properties, which I’ll sign over for her, and the right to call herself my sister.” He nodded. “I’d have given her ten times more to rid myself of her presence, and to be able to have you, Kathryn.” He took a deep breath. “But she took my offer and is contented with it. I don’t think Cleves can be a very rich estate so eagerly did she take it.”

  “And now I am thus free to marry you, if you will have me.““I will have you, my lord,” she said. “Conscious of the great honor you do me.”

  Section Five

  Tudor Rose

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Kathryn had never thought much upon her wedding, always having thought it would be a simple affair with some country esquire. But if she could have cast just one desire for that day that would decide her life, it would be that it should be a fair day and warm.

  It was not to be.

  Though it was August and the day promised warmth late in the afternoon, she left Lambeth for Hampton Court in a carriage just after dawn, and there was fog all about, obscuring the roads and the gardens as the carriage departed.

  She was alone in the carriage save for the duchess, who, it turned out, wished to spend this last opportunity in lecturing Kathryn about what she should do and the intricacies of marriage.

  Perhaps her delicacy prevented the duchess’s remembering that her granddaughter, the future queen, had already some understanding of the relations between men and women, but the duchess spent a great deal of time in explaining those and in such an odd way that it seemed to Kathryn that this woman, who’d been married twice and had—it was rumored—used her seductive power as her weapon an equal number of times in the shifting sands of the Wars of the Roses, didn’t know anything about men or the wishes of men or yet how t
hings happened between men and women.

  “You will mind,” the Duchess said. “To always take care of his pleasure first and make sure that he is pleased in you. It is not important whether you experience pleasure or not, though if he asks you, you are to express yourself wholly fulsome on the great pleasure he gives you and how much you enjoy his ministrations. Is that clear girl?”

  Kathryn inclined her head and told the duchess it was clear. It seemed to her very silly, really. Perhaps the intimate part of her life with Henry wouldn’t be wholly pleasurable or not pleasurable in its own right. She remembered her encounters with Manox, where he was the one pursuing his pleasure and she’d never fully enjoyed it.

  But even then, in her worry that they’d be discovered and the worst consequences that could come of it, Kathryn had found some enjoyment of the mere physical pleasure. She could not see how it would be different with the king.

  Oh, surely, he was old. And the duchess expounded on his physical repulsiveness at great length. “I swear,” she said. “Harry has gotten so fat that the three largest men that could be found could easily fit in his doublet and with room to spare.”

  And then, after a moment. “And they say, you know, that the wound on his leg does stink, like a corpse that is three days rotting. Fortunately, he has his physicians and his assistants, not like some gentleman in the country where you might be called to minister to him. It cannot be a pleasant job for those who have to change his bandage.” She shook her head. “I understand they fill the bandages with perfumes and many pleasant odors. But if you should notice any smell, pretend not to.. In fact, I would advise you, before you go to bed, to take you a kerchief and soak it in perfume. This, breathe you in. Some strong scent, like camphor. Breathe deeply till all your sense of smell be dead, and then you will not risk making a face should the smell from his wound come to your nostrils.”