No Will But His

by Hoyt, Sarah A.

  That he was very thin couldn’t be denied. Gaunt almost, his face showed sharp angles of bones through the stretched skin.

  But there was more to it than that. He looked haggard, too, as though he’d been running from something for far too long. But more than that, he looked tawdry and tainted.

  She couldn’t really explain it any better than that. His eyes were as dark and sparkling as they’d been when he’d first fascinated her. His hair remained dark. There were, it is true, two vicious scars across his cheek on the left side, but Kathryn felt, in some obscure way, that this should have added to his charm rather than deterring from it. Why then did she feel as though he were not the real Francis Dereham? As if he were not nearly as important or handsome as in her memory?

  He wore more expensive clothes than he had then—a beautiful doublet of green brocade that Kathryn would guess had been the duchess’s gift—but they only made him look more like he was out of place. As though he were wearing the clothes of a more important man.

  The way he walked into the room was just the way she remembered, too, head held high, his step long. But it had a way of looking, now, as though he were only trying to look confident, as though it weren’t his true self, as if inwardly he were slinking and sliding into the room.

  He approached her, smiling broadly, his hands extended to meet hers.

  “Master Dereham,” she said, sharply.

  Something to her voice, she was not sure what, had the effect of bringing him to a standstill. “Kathryn?” he said hesitantly.

  “Master Dereham,” she said, again. “One doesn’t address the queen in such a way unless one happens to be the king.”

  Dereham looked like he was about to speak, but the look on Kathryn’s face—probably, Kathryn felt, made sterner by the fact that she was very tired and felt as though she were holding on to the very edge of sanity—must have quelled his ideas before they came to his lips. He bowed to her.

  “It has come to our attention,” Kathryn said, before he had time to think of something else to say, “that you have been causing trouble in my household, Master Dereham. It appears you have had a dispute with Mr. Johns.”

  “Mr. Johns, Mr. Johns, Mr. Johns,” Francis Dereham said, mimicking her voice. “Everyone is so willing to lecture me about Mr. Johns that you’d think he was the king himself.”

  Kathryn made an effort to speak but lost, as she was seeing Francis for what he was—a shoddy, overconfident young man with a mocking voice and little else. This had seemed like maturity and manhood to her when she was at Horsham. How foolish she had been. Even Harry without the crown, with his clumsy hands, his hesitant ways, was much preferable to Dereham. And to Dereham she’d pledged her hand. Oh, she’d been very ill used when no one had given her a better knowledge of the world.

  But beyond the shock of realizing that everything she’d once believed had in fact been wrong, ridiculously wrong, there was a deep tiredness from her not-yet-fully-healed body. When she spoke, she spoke in few words, afraid she could not command the breath or the ability to speak in longer sentences. “Master Dereham, Mr. Johns is one of the men who run my very large and very complex household. Every time you disrespect him, or cause him to have to enforce his perfectly right and legal rules upon you, you make my household run a little worse.

  “I’ll have you know that before, when my vice steward got drunk, the king himself took a particular interest in the case, scolded him, and told him he would not be drunk before me again and also that certain rules of sobriety and cleanliness would be observed in my household.”

  “I was never drunk,” Dereham protested, his fine dark eyes flashing at her.

  “No, Master Dereham, and that makes it worse, since you said nonsense about having been in my council before I married my lord the king. Nonsense that, badly interpreted, could cause my lord to think that I was less than honest with him or less than a pure maiden when I married him. Know you that the king had a friar arrested, for speaking against my reputation? Why would you then wish to risk it?”

  Dereham was looking at her, his mouth half open, as though he meant to protest but had been stopped by the very idea that he’d put his own life in risk when he’d spoken. And that was the worst of it. Kathryn realized that he had never loved her. He’d loved his own pride. He’d loved what he thought was his prowess in attaching the daughter of the Howards. Nothing more.

  Had he loved her, he might have been maddened enough with jealousy to be willing to die to get his revenge. But the truth was that he hadn’t known he was at any risk. He’d only thought to do her a bad turn because she had preferred the king to him.

  In Master Dereham’s own mind there was one person he loved, and that was himself. No one else even appeared to him as another person, much less as someone he could love.

  “Do not say things of that kind again, Master Dereham,” she said, tiredly. “The palace is large, there are many people in it, and some are bound to put quite the wrong construction upon your words. In memory of the carefree children we once were, I would fain not see your head separated from your body.”

  He pushed his lower lip forward in a petulant gesture, and tried for a come back. “There are things I could say,” he said, ‘if I wanted to.”

  “There are things all of us could say,” Kathryn said, “if we wanted to. But the truth is, do we really want it? When it comes right to it, Master Dereham, think about whom it would hurt. We would fain not see you hurt.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, and finally pivoted on his foot and left, still walking in his broad stride, with his head held high.

  “A very upstart sort of young man,” Lady Rutland said. “Riffraff, as Mr. Johns said.”

  “And Mr. Johns was right,” Kathryn said.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “Sweetheart,” Henry told her one night, after making his clumsy love to her and while he lay beside her, his great hand resting on her stomach. “Do you think you are now well enough to go on progress with me? I’ve been meaning to do it for years, you know, but first there was Jane’s death and then … well, there have been a lot of reasons I haven’t done it.” He paused. “But I think that the country needs to see her king, and the North Country most of all.”

  “I will go wherever you command me, my lord,” Kathryn said.

  He patted her. “You see, there have been rebellions in the north, and now we need to go and show them our majesty and our power. It will be a very big progress,” he said. “We’ll assemble the whole court, and as soon as the road is dry enough—for you must know it has been unseasonably wet—we’ll progress to the north with carts and baggage. I meant to do it when you fell so ill, and we had to wait until you recovered. But now we will go. There will be tents and carriages, and I will try to make it as grand and great for you as I can manage. Would you like that, Kathryn?”

  Kathryn said yes, partly because she wanted to get away from the confined palace, where she had been so ill, and partly because she thought the king himself was longing to go, and she should join him.

  In a few days they left, progressing north to Collyweston, the great country palace of Henry’s grandmother Lady Margaret Beaufort. After four or five days, they crossed into Lincolnshire.

  “The progress will stop resentments,” the king said. “It will knit me and my subjects as a whole once more.”

  It seemed that way. They went into Stamford and Boston in procession.

  For Henry and Kathryn it was a sort of honeymoon combined with a pageant—an extended coronation trip for her.

  At night they slept together in whatever beds the local gentry made available—and those were often at least as good, if not better, than the one they had at home—and during the day the king often rode, or if his leg troubled him, he would sit in the litter with Kathryn. Together they would doze, or she would play the lute for him. Sometimes he told her he should compose songs anew—that he would compose her such songs as would amaze her.

  And somet
imes he told her about the country ahead—the loyal gentry and those that were not so loyal.

  At other times, she taught her ladies new dances, which they displayed for the king when the progress was stopped long enough. Or she and her ladies would plan new and elaborate gowns.

  All should have been well—it all would have been well. But Kathryn, though she tried very hard, could not forget Thomas Culpepper. In her mind and heart, he kept returning, like a dream from which she never fully woke and wasn’t quite sure she wished to. Day and night she thought of him and imagined what he was doing.

  During the progress, sometimes she leaned out and would catch sight of him, riding beside the litter. The thing was that whenever she looked at him, always, she would see him looking back at her.

  This is foolish, she told herself. Queens don’t develop passions for young men of the court like silly young girls do for men in their grandmother’s household. I am the queen. And, force, Thomas Culpepper has caught my fantasy but I trow he’s no great thing. At heart, he is no better than Dereham. Riffraff.

  No matter how often she told it, she could not believe it. She would catch sight of him, and always he was as he should be—a gentleman of manner and of fact, riding his horse or playing at dice; practicing his sword or perhaps dancing in the evening with one of her ladies.

  One of the evenings, the king saw her looking and patted her hand. “Thomas Culpepper is a good dancer, is he not? I vow he is the most graceful of my gentlemen. He’s been my page ever since he was old enough to toddle about court.” He grinned. “When he was very young, sometimes he would get scared and crawl into bed with me during the night. Now I hear he crawls into the beds of half your ladies, the scoundrel. But perhaps I shouldn’t say that to you, my dear. I see you’re shocked.”

  Kathryn felt as though she’d been slapped. The idea of Culpepper sleeping with half her ladies made her throat close. She wanted to dance with him. She wanted to remind him of his letter to her—oh, she should have kept it!—she wanted to make sure he loved her as much as she loved him. That he loved her so much he would never forget her, and that no one would ever replace her in his heart.

  She could not say that. Not to the king. She heard her voice, distant and even, say, “He seems like a very good sort of gentleman.”

  “The best gentleman that ever lived,” the king said, and then cleared his throat, as though realizing that what he had just said contradicted his earlier statements. “And I’m sure if he ends up in any ladies’ beds, it is as much their fault as his own. For he’s a young and madcap creature, and at that age it is hard to resist a pretty pair of eyes or a fair smile. But … well, so it is at my age, is it not?” he said.

  Kathryn nodded absently. Her mind was full of Thomas Culpepper, and she longed for him so much it hurt. And yet it must never be, never. Everything separated them, but most of all that she was married to the king. Even an ordinary man had the power to undo his wife, but the king’s majesty could utterly destroy where it loved. If she crossed him, she would not rise again.

  At the end of a long day, they withdrew to their lodgings at Lincoln Castle, where they had separate apartments.

  As was customary, the king visited her, but he soon left to go back to his own apartments. Since his leg had stopped flowing for those few days, he seemed to have remembered his age. He would come to her every night, but often he would leave her, that they both might sleep undisturbed, he said. He did not want to keep her awake, he said, since her health was still fragile. And besides, he slept best upon his own bed.

  Normally as soon as the king left, Kathryn fell asleep and stayed that way till early dawn. But this time, she could not. She kept thinking of Culpepper at the dance that evening, dancing with half of her ladies. Was he sleeping with them, too?

  She got up and she paced her chamber, but it was too closed in, too hot, too confined. “Jane,” she called, touching Lady Rochefort’s arm, as the woman slept on a camp bed at the foot of her own bed. “Jane, I beg you, come.”

  Jane got up. She had that look in her face, as though she were once more seeing things that weren’t there, or perhaps only things that were not there to anyone else. She would jump at shadows and look around in confusion.

  However, Kathryn thought, it was as well. She was taking Jane with her, and the fact that she had Jane with her should be enough—more than enough—for people to think she was well chaperoned. And besides, she meant to do nothing too dangerous, nothing too bad. If anyone asked, she would say she was going to the king’s chambers to check on her husband’s sleep, having been disturbed by a bad dream.

  She was going to the king’s apartments, that much was true. She was going to check on the whereabouts of Thomas Culpepper, king’s gentleman and the most gallant man in the court.

  Outside her chamber, there was a hallway, and at the end of the hallway a door, which led to a sort of terrace. Past that door was the other side of the palace, which was built as a mirror to this part—and in that other part the king’s chambers.

  As Kathryn started down the hallway to the king’s chambers, she saw a gentleman come the other way, carrying something. Both of them stopped. She thought she recognized in the dimly lit gentleman the form and shape of Thomas Culpepper. She must be dreaming. But he had stopped at the same time and was staring at her.

  “Master Culpepper,” she said, at the very same time he said, “Your Majesty.”

  They looked at each other across the hallway. Slowly, slowly he came toward her, as though he were afraid she would vanish. Kathryn was conscious of Jane at her elbow, and she wondered what Jane would make of this all but was afraid to turn and see.

  “You see,” Culpepper said softly. “I was coming to your chamber in the hopes of finding one of your women who was still awake and who would relay my gift to you.”

  “Your gift, sir?” she asked, confused. For a moment she thought he meant his love or perhaps his heart. But he extended the thing he’d been carrying, which on second look was a round basket of the sort rustics carried around.

  “This morning,” he said. “While we were riding past a market, they were selling the finest oranges, and I remembered my promise to that little girl who grew up to be Your Majesty,” he said. “I thought I should fulfill it. We all know how important promises are.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He looked around. “I see you have your woman with you, so nothing could be more proper,” he said. “Than if we went out through this door and onto the terrace and ate oranges in the moonlight. Would Your Majesty like that?”

  She inclined her head. “I couldn’t think of anything I would like better.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The oranges were sweet, and so was the company.

  Jane, perhaps sensing she was not wanted, or perhaps acting solely in response to her ghosts and visions and those half-formed dreams that seemed to be more than half of her consciousness, sat a little away from them while they sat on the steps of the ancient terrace under the moonlight, the basket of oranges between them.

  “You don’t know how many days I spent on knees, in the chapel,” he said. “Crawling to the crucifix.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, while you were ill,” he said.

  “For the king’s health?” she asked.

  “I love the king’s majesty,” Culpepper said. “And as God is my witness, I’d never wish any evil to befall him, but in truth, it was you I prayed for. When you came upon Charles and I in the king’s chamber, seeing you like that, pale and wan with the blood pouring out of you … we thought you were dead, and that is the truth. And for days, even your women seemed to think you were dead.”

  Kathryn reached for a orange. Quite accidentally, her hand touched his. He did not remove his, but instead, he turned it upside down, so that her hand might rest in his palm, and then, slowly, he closed his palm, so that he was holding her hand, in the basket, over the soft, sun-warmed oranges.

  He looked ahead
at the little wood that bordered on the terrace, as if he expected some sort of answer from the shadows and the trees. “Do you love him very much, then?” he asked.

  “Him?” Kathryn asked, quite lost.

  “The king. His Majesty. The way you worried about him … Then way you came running so fast, and then were so distressed that the child must perforce leave your womb … I realized then … Kathryn …” He waited as if to see if she would object to the use of her given name. When she didn’t, he inclined his head, as if this too were an answer. “When you came in like that, so anxious for his health, I realized what a fool I had been. Trying to spite the duchess by not answering her summons, I lost the opportunity at having for wife not only the most beautiful lady who ever lived, but the sweetest, too consumed with zeal for her husband’s well being.”

  “Should I not care about the health of my lord?” Kathryn asked, and then, more angry at herself than at him or even at the duchess or the duke of Norfolk, feeling that everything she must say and live and do was a lie, and it was all her fault, she charged ahead, “If it counts, Master Culpepper, I don’t think you spurned the marriage. I don’t think you’d ever have been given a chance at it.”

  “But the Duchess of Norfolk summoned me,” he said. “She sent word to the court that I was to come and that she would have a message to my father about a very advantageous marriage for me.”

  Kathryn, who felt as though, in the last year, she’d learned far more of the world than she’d ever meant to, gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, I know that’s what she said. But I think the truth was quite different. I think, Master Culpepper, that the Duke of Norfolk and the dowager duchess went fishing. And that I was that with which they baited their hook.”

  “You think they meant you for the king all along?” he said.

  “I would lay a wager on it,” Kathryn said.

  “Well then,” Culpepper said. “My guilt is less but not my regret. You were always, then, too dear for my possessing, but a man can dream.”