Chapter Thirty-seven
Kathryn woke up in an empty bed, staring at an embroidered canopy. Light came through the wrought linen of the bed curtains, and from outside she could hear people moving.
She knew, from serving Anne of Cleves, that well before the queen woke, her chamberers and maids would be busy in the room: warming the queen’s clothes by the fire, preparing water for her washing, getting everything ready to spare Her Majesty the smallest discomfort.
Save the discomfort, of course, of having her entire life take place in front of strangers; she was always on display.
Pulling her chemise around her, she sat up in bed and made to open the curtains, which were brought fully open by Lady Margaret Douglas. Lady Margaret was the king’s twenty-five-year-old niece, a woman of such headstrong character that four years ago she had secretly married Lord Thomas Howard. The affair had ended with Lord Howard in the Tower and then his death, for daring to marry without the king’s permission.
But she had been one of Anne of Cleves ladies-in-waiting and met Kathryn, and Kathryn had done her best to draw this odd royal widow out. Now, Lady Douglas seemed to be enjoying life in a quiet way and had become the chief of Kathryn’s ladies, holding the same position as Lady Rutland had held under Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves.
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she said.
“Good Morning, Lady Douglas,” Kathryn said, and, looking confused, added, “How late is it?”
“Why, dawn has barely broken, Your Majesty.”
“But … where is the king, my husband?” she asked, of a sudden fearful that in her embraces, the king had detected that bit of experience that told him he was not the only and certainly not the first and that even now he was somewhere, plotting to have her seized, perhaps to have her executed. For was it not treason to not let the king know you were not a virgin?
But Lady Douglas only laughed. “His Majesty is out, with his gentlemen, my lady, for bright and early did he ride to the hounds.”
“The hounds?”
“He went hunting, milady,” Lady Douglas said, and smiled. “He said he felt most marvelous refreshed and as though he were as young as you are.”
Kathryn blushed, but got up and submitted to the ministrations of her various maids as she had once watched Anne of Cleves do it. As she did so, Lady Douglas, standing a little aside, talked to her.
“Your Majesty has received several petitions,” she said. “For advancement or else for a post at court.”
“Do we have vacancies, then?” she asked. “In my household?”
Lady Douglas smiled. “The Lady of Cleve’s German maids have left to go with her to Richmond, and that left some openings. But more than that, my lady, it is customary for the new queen to give posts in her household to friends and relatives.”
“But—” Kathryn started, meaning to say she had no friends or relatives in need of such bounty.
She was interrupted by Lady Douglas. “Your mother, now widowed, has asked, of your goodness, whether she might not join your household.”
“My mother!” Kathryn said, thinking she might be dreaming. She could but dimly remember that Jocasta Culpepper, who had been her mother, but she did know that Jocasta had died, giving birth to yet another child, who had died himself aborning.
“Your father’s third wife, Lady Margaret Howard, Lady Margaret Jennings, as was.”
Kathryn remembered Dame Margaret more clearly. She remembered her coming into the household and making her rules and buying Kathryn a very pretty gown and … sending her off to become someone else’s responsibility. She barely prevented herself from protesting that Dame Margaret had never so much as given her the promised oranges, but instead she closed her eyes.
It would be so easy to take revenge. Much too easy. She understood now why people would go in trembling from fear of the king, who could not only separate their heads from their bodies, but also deny them posts and advancement. She might be able to have people killed—from what she understood, Anne had, though it required much more work than simply ordering it done.
However, because she could have people put to death did not mean she need to do so In fact, perhaps it meant she shouldn’t, for such a power could be its own undoing. She couldn’t avoid one part of being a queen: that no one would show her a real face or a true emotion; that no one would tell her, “I like thee not,” even if it were true. What she could avoid was the other part. She could avoid knowingly and by her actions giving people reason to like her not or cause them to hate her in secret till they could do her a wrong.
She remembered all too well the closed-in feuds in the dormitory at Horsham. How one girl could hate another forever over a stolen hair ribbon or a man’s attention.
But those at least had been open feuds, not the sort of dark, closed in feelings where someone hated you but would not let you know. Where the hatred festered and grew till … Till like Jane Boleyn’s hatred and jealousy of Anne Boleyn erupted in absurd accusations of incest, which in her madness, she might have believed at the time.
No. Kathryn would not tread hard upon the halls of power. She inclined her head. She had two hundred women. She wouldn’t even notice her stepmother among the lot. And then, if she did, what did it mean? She doubted Dame Margaret hated her or even despised her. Doubtless sending Kathryn away had just been what any woman in her circumstances would do, trying to lessen the expenses of a spendthrift and all too fertile husband.
“Tell Lady Margaret Howard,” she said, gently, “That I will be glad to find her a place in my household, and then, pray, do you so, Lady Douglas, as I am none too sure how the household is arranged yet.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty,” Lady Douglas said, even as the chamberers were lowering Kathryn’s overgown over her head and cinching it in place.
“And while at it, does Lady Rochefort have a place in my household?”
Lady Douglas hesitated. “Your … your grandmother, Lady Howard, she said–”
Kathryn could well imagine what she’d said. Poor Jane had very few friends, since everyone knew she had as good as murdered her husband, even if she’d used the block and the executioner’s ax to do it. But if that one sin were held against her all her life … and besides, she’d suffered more from her crime than anyone else, arguably perhaps even more than the man she’d killed. “Send word to Lady Rochefort that I’ll always have a place for her in my household. She might be what she is, but she’s always been a good friend to me.”
“If Your Majesty so wishes,” Lady Douglas said, and bowed her head. “But …”
“I know. But I do so wish.”
Lady Douglas sighed. In this, too, Kathryn realized, she was different now. No one would offer her unwanted advice. No one would push upon her their own opinions. All she had to do was say “I do so wish” or “I do so intend” and all resistance would melt.
“I should also tell Your Majesty that we’ve received a very ill-spelt letter from a woman who calls herself your old friend and dormitory fellow Mary Tilney, who also wishes for a place in your household.”
“Mary Tilney!” Kathryn said, this time with nothing but pleasure. “Of course. Please, find her a place where I can see her often and we can reminisce of our days as girls together. You see, she was the person who showed me around my grandmother’s house and … and helped me with everything when I first joined.”
With that Lady Douglas was dismissed, and the queen left her chamber in the midst of a group of her ladies to hear mass.
The king didn’t return till the evening.
He came in, bluff and hail, his walking stick quite forgotten, full of sparkling stories about his hunt. By the light of the tapers placed upon the table next to them, he looked younger and almost handsome.
Kathryn knew well enough, from hearing Dereham tell of his exploits, few of which interested her at all, how to keep gentlemen talking, even if she were on the verge of falling asleep from sheer disinterest. There was the smile and the touc
h and the admiring exclamation.
All of them worked on the king just as though he had been the most inexperienced of courtiers, quite unready for female admiration. He talked fast and happily, of stags missed and stags brought to earth and of his dogs and horses, which were in dire need of exercise.
“I’ve been a laggard, sweetheart. I see now,” he said. “Jane’s death so took the joy out of my life that I did not have the strength to do anything and, therefore, let myself get old before my time. But you know, I am not yet quite half a century. That’s not so bad, is it?”
And Kathryn, suppressing a quick, lancing pain at the thought that she herself was still far short of a quarter century, said loudly and well, hoping she heard it herself and believed it, “Certainly not!”
The king’s eyes sparkled as he smiled at her. “Aye, my rose, I know I am older than you, but the thing is, when you touch me, I feel as though I were young again. I regret only that I can’t be truly your age, and live my lifelong with you and sire many children.”
“Your Majesty will live many long years yet,” she said, laughing. “Perhaps another half century. And we shall see many strong children grow to manhood.”
He got out of his seat nimbly, like a young man, and knelt at her feet, kissing both her hands. “May it be as you say, sweetheart,” he said, as his eyes sparkled at her, full of love.
That night, by small touches and directions, she started teaching him how to pleasure a woman.
Chapter Thirty-eight
In August they moved to Windsor. Kathryn traveled in comfort in a curtained litter, with a company of ladies. Strangely, the only ones she felt comfortable with were Mary Tilney and Jane Boleyn. The first because Kathryn had known Mary so long, and even if Mary tried not to tell her the truth, Kathryn could read it in Mary’s eyes and expressions. The second, because Jane was mad, and being mad she could always say what she pleased, even if often she said it while speaking to the clear air or to that shade of George Boleyn that seemed never to be very far from her thoughts or her sight.
It hadn’t been a merry trip like the ones that Kathryn had made with her fellows from the dormitory when she was single. Without being told she guessed it would be unseemly for the queen to sing and make merry jests while in her litter with her ladies-in-waiting.
She did play a little on her lute to pass the time. But most of all, she looked out through a slight opening in the curtains at the dun-colored fields. Here and there, she saw cattle lying about and from the smell perceived they were dead. Men and women lined the roads she passed, their caps removed, their heads bowed. They didn’t call her whore or harlot, as they’d called out to poor Anne Boleyn on the night of her coronation, but the voices in which they called out, “Long live Your Majesty” and “God bless Queen Kathryn,” were more subdued than not.
It wasn’t till they arrived in Windsor, while she was washing away the dust from travel in warm water in front of the fireplace, that she could ask Lady Douglas, “What is it? The plague?”
Lady Douglas shook her head. “Faith,” she said. “There are rumors of the plague in London, and that is why the king’s majesty doesn’t see fit to take you there. But that is not what causes this in the countryside.”
“What is it, then?” Kathryn said. “For I have traveled before,” she said, as if all her trips between Horsham and Lambeth made her a world-weary traveler. “And I have never seen such dun fields, so many dead cattle, or people so dispirited. Do they dislike me for their queen then?”
“Oh, no, Your Majesty.” Lady Douglas said, while helping rinse dust from Kathryn’s long auburn hair. “There are, maybe,” she said, “some as do but not that many. The ones who resent you at all do so because they loved Lady Anne excessively and wished her to be queen. But she herself, having accepted the divorce so mildly ,gives them no force to pursue her rights for her.” She shook her head. “No, milady. What ails the kingdom is this long, hot, dry summer, the lack of rain. The crops die in the field and the cattle for lack of fodder.”
What an omen! Kathryn shivered, afraid that this would be held to her account, but Lady Douglas, as though reading her thoughts, shook her head. “No, milady, I don’t think we can hold it to your account. It has happened before in this kingdom, and it will again. My grandfather always said there was no accounting for the weather or for the rage of princes.” And as though realizing how her words could be taken, she laughed a little. “You see,” she said, “he had lived through the Wars of the Roses with all their shifting alliances, and he thought that princes could not be trusted not to make war at will and with no regard.”
She dried Kathryn’s hair upon a linen towel and commenced brushing it. Normally this was the work of other experienced, specialized attendants, but Lady Douglas seemed to wish to talk to Kathryn in semiprivacy—there were only two women standing near the fireplace—and, therefore, undertook this work herself.
“I thank God everyday,” she said, “that I was born in this time and not my grandfather’s, and that I grew up under the rule of such a good king as our King Henry, because he’s kept us from having war in the kingdom, everyone’s hand against everyone’s else’s till it seemed it would be the end days, just as the Bible foretold.”
She brushed Kathryn’s hair carefully. “There is a letter, Your Majesty, from the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.”
Kathryn stiffened a little but tried not to look alarmed. “My grandmother? Is aught wrong? You said that there is plague in London, and Lambeth is not that far away. I know the king has physicians. Should I—” As she spoke, she started to rise from her seat.
“Nothing is wrong with your grandmother, Your Majesty,” Lady Douglas said. “Only she writes to you to ask you a favor for someone she said was an old friend.”
Kathryn looked puzzled. Lady Douglas continued, “She has heard from a man called Francis Dereham.”
“Francis!” Kathryn said, surprised. The name came to her as the name of one dead, no more to be pronounced between the living.
“You know him, then, Your Majesty?”
“He was … He was one of the gentlemen of honor at the house of my grandmother,” she said. “And I have spoken to him in the past. He was, I heard, gone to Ireland to make his fortune in some enterprise of privateering.”
“It seems,” Lady Douglas said. “That his enterprise prospers not, and that he’s determined to come to court and has applied for a post in your household.”
“In my household?” Kathryn asked. “But why cannot my grandmother give him a place in her house?”
Lady Douglas shrugged. “I know not. Save that your grandmother said that he would make you a good secretary and that she’s sure that he would be a comfort to you to have so near.”
Kathryn did not know what her grandmother could be about, nor yet why Lady Douglas looked so pensive. She shook her head. “And yet, he is not in our country, yet,” she said. “And I do not wish to make a decision or to think overmuch on this. When he comes onto our land and is ready to make a proper application to my household, I’ll see how I feel about it. Why my grandmother thought this one thing—of all things—would give me comfort, I know not.”
The look of Lady Douglas’s face, which had been closed and grave, seemed to ease up of its own accord. “Ah, my lady,” she said at last. “Elderly people have such odd fancies, do they not? Who knows what she can have been thinking.”
“Indeed, who knows?” Kathryn said. “Perhaps she was thinking of her own youth and how much pleasure it would give her, now, to see someone from that time. But I’m not so old that my time at Horsham makes me misty eyed.”
Lady Douglas smiled and shook her head. “Your Majesty is not old at all.” Then she bowed. “If you please, I will now call your maids to help dress you, that you may not be late to dinner with His Majesty, the king.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
The long, hot, dry summer continued. They moved from Windsor to Ampthill in Bedfordshire. The king talked of taking Kathry
n to London and having a reception in her honor, but it seemed the plague lingered there and the king—for all his renewed vigor—retained a great fear of any illness he might catch.
Instead, they had banquets and parties; he went hunting and sometimes took the queen.
Kathryn was vaguely aware that foreign ambassadors were kept waiting, that ministers grew impatient with documents to be signed in the king’s chambers. She knew that the business of the kingdom seemed to have come to a standstill while the king took his ease and enjoyed his honeymoon.
But everyone in her household smiled, and said how renewed the king was and how he seemed to have got his joy in life back. And none accounted it an ill if the business of ruling had to wait yet awhile. So Kathryn determined to enjoy herself.
She had a dim, vague idea that there would be more serious business in her future. She knew that once she went into London there would be delegations and petitions, people wishing for favors from her, and people wishing her to intercede with the king for them. Already some local nobles had attempted this, but she had told them—and truthfully, too—that for all the king’s kindness and love toward her, she had very little influence over his decisions. Well she minded the example of Jane Seymour, who had only come close to losing her lord’s favor when she’d tried to ask him to spare the lives of the northern rebels. Kathryn, younger than Jane and not carrying the heir to the throne, thought it best not to attempt any such thing.
Instead, she immersed herself in the whirlwind of celebrations. She arranged to have new clothes in the French fashion, having noticed that those were the king’s favorites. She accompanied him in the hunt but made quite sure not to out ride him. She let him lead just as she let him win his card games with her.
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