The Light in the Labyrinth

by Wendy J Dunn - BooksGoSocial Historical Fiction

  Aunt Nan hugged her child. “Sweetheart, how right you are! And just wait until you see your Lord Father. He will be just like us, in yellow, too. The sun indeed.” She pointed to the tapestry telling the story of Esther. “Can you tell me the name of that Queen, Bess?”

  The little girl frowned with deep concentration. “Ethter?” she offered with a lisp.

  Aunt Nan grinned. “Close, sweetheart. Her name was Esther. She was a great and good Queen.”

  Bess patted her mother’s face. “Like you, Mama?”

  Aunt Nan lowered her head. “I pray to God to help me be so. One day, when you’re older, I will tell you the story of Esther.”

  Bess bolted up straighter in her mother’s arms. “Now!”

  Aunt Nan’s mouth tightened. “Bess, that is not how you speak to your mother. Not now, or ever.”

  Her daughter crumbled under her mother’s stern expression. Hiccupping, tears welling, she nestled her face against her mother’s breast. “Bess will be good, Mama.”

  Patting her daughter’s back, Aunt Nan turned to Lady Shelton. “Aunt, how does my daughter? Is she well?”

  Lady Shelton gave a brief smile to her charge. “Surely, Your Grace, you see for yourself. My only concern is that the princess is teething, which causes the Lady Princess much distress at night despite rubbing her gums with oil of cloves. As for the child herself, why I have never known a quicker infant for words or understanding.” She laughed. “The child heard someone speak Latin the other day and repeated it back to me. Perfect it was, too.”

  Aunt Nan grinned. “She takes after my father. He has a fine ear and tongue for languages.” She stroked her little girl’s hair. “I am pleased she starts to learn Latin so early. She will need it when she is older.” She lowered her head to her daughter’s ear and whispered, “Elisabeth of France? Empress Elizabeth? What throne shall you have, my little Bess? But first you belong to England, and for now—” Aunt Nan kissed her daughter “—you’re mine, all mine!”

  Aunt Nan and her women walked down to join the King. Together, they entered the banquet hall, and he took the little princess from her governess’s arms. Jigging her up and down as if in dance, he took Elizabeth around the room, showing her off to his court and the many ambassadors invited on this night. The King laughed and yanked off her cap. Her hair tumbled free around her face and gleamed fire-bright from the light of many candles.

  “Mine once was exactly the same,” he said with pride.

  The child laughed with her tall father, reaching her hands up to stroke his beard. For a long moment, they regarded each other, their smiles wide and full of love. Aunt Nan’s face lit with a happiness that embraced her husband and child from a near distance. She rested a hand on the swell of her belly.

  Kate’s smile at her aunt’s joy disappeared when she noticed Francis talking to a friend. She withdrew into the shadows. He was so animated, so carefree—with no awareness that her heart cried out to him. Brushing away her tears, Kate rushed over to join Madge, now with the princess in her charge.

  15

  KATE DID NOT KNOW of Catherine Willoughby’s return to court until she found her reading in the Queen’s apartment. The Philosophy of Consolation captured what seemed Catherine’s rapt attention, but she lifted her face at Kate’s approach.

  Putting down her book, Catherine rose to embrace Kate. “I missed you,” she whispered.

  “I, you, too,” Kate replied. Their French hoods touching, she put her cheek against her friend’s and hugged her tighter.

  They broke apart and sat next to one another. Pale and drawn, Catherine looked older than before, as if she had gone through much during her time away.

  “Is all well with your son?” Kate asked.

  Worry puckered Catherine’s brow. “He is teething, my poor babe. He is not the strong lad that my first born was at the same age.” She bent her head and drew a deep breath. “While I am glad to see my friends at court and, of course, the Queen, if my husband hadn’t commanded my return to court, I would have chosen to stay with my son.” She held the book on her lap tightly. “But my little son is better. I pray and trust in God—that’s all we can do. 'Tis in His hands.”

  “Know that your child is in my prayers, but I cannot lie and say I’m not glad you’re back. With you here, I can be merry and enjoy better all the festivities planned to celebrate the death of Katherine of Aragon.”

  Catherine opened her book to a page. Disturbed by her silence, Kate moved closer, and the words on the page seized her attention.

  If then you are master of yourself, you will be in possession of that which you will never wish to lose, and which Fortune will never be able to take from you.

  She rested a hand on Catherine’s shoulder. “Why do you not speak?”

  The young Duchess shrugged. “I have no reason to take joy in the death of a good woman such as the one who gave me my name.” Catherine’s fingers cradled one side of her face. “While I do not like being away from my sons, especially when one of my boys is ailing, I know there is another whom I will soon comfort because of the Dowager Princess’s death.”

  She moved her head towards the window. Kate looked, too. The window showed what she already knew—a grey, cold day, but the snow no longer fell as heavily as before.

  “I think she will be home soon. I hope so,” Catherine murmured.

  “Who?”

  “My mother.” A worried expression on her pale face, Catherine gyrated around, checking the room. Most of the Queen’s other women were gathered around the blazing fire, far enough away to make it seem Kate was alone with the Duchess. Even so, Catherine bent closer and whispered in Kate’s ear. “Will you vow not to say one word to anyone about what I tell you?”

  She nodded at her friend. “I vow. Did you not tell me that silence was the best weapon we have at court?”

  The Duchess gave a short laugh. “Yet here am I, about to speak of matters that may be best left unsaid.” She glanced once more towards the other women, then sat back in the chair. “I sent word to my mother that the Princess was dying, and she went to her.” Leaning her elbow on the carved armrest of the chair, she cupped the side of her face again. “Even without the King’s permission, she managed the Princess’s guards somehow. My mother has that way with her. I hear before they knew it, she was with the Queen.” Catherine shook her head. “Forgive me, I mean the Dowager Princess of Wales.”

  Kate remembered that Catherine’s mother had come with Katherine of Aragon from Castile. “They were great friends, did you not say?”

  Catherine lifted her head. “More than that—they were blood kin. As children, they swore they would always be sisters. My mother went willingly into exile from a country she loved because of her Catalina. When the Duke, my husband, told me the princess was on her deathbed, I had to let my mother know.” She visibly swallowed. “I do not think I or anyone else will be able to comfort her on her return.”

  Two days later she told Kate a messenger had arrived that morning. There was no letter, just a verbal message telling of her mother’s homecoming. “Mother is never as brief as that,” said Catherine, her brow puckered in apprehension. “I must go to her.”

  She had still not returned by the time Kate returned to her chamber for the night. She spent the night restless with worry about her friend.

  Early the next day, Kate hurried to Catherine’s chamber, where a maidservant allowed her in. She found her friend out of bed, but sitting by the fire still in her shift, with a thick shawl slung over her shoulders. At first, her loose, dark hair hid her face from view, but then she raised it. Her pale cheeks splotched red and eyes red-rimmed, Catherine must have wept for hours.

  “What is it?” Kate asked in fear. “'Tis not your son?”

  Catherine sniffed and reached for her comb on the table beside her, but just as she took hold of it, more tears welled. Lowering her head, she dropped the comb, her hands covering her face. “I do not know how to help her.”

  Kate
picked up the comb and, taking up a lock of her friend’s undressed hair, carefully started to untangle it. “So, ’tis your mother you weep for?”

  Catherine jerked up. “Aye, my mother. She wants to die. She wants to die so she follows after the Princess”

  Kate swallowed her shock while placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “She does not mean it.”

  “I wish I could believe that. I have never seen my mother break her heart. I have never thought of her as an old woman, but she is now. When I told her I yet need her, she sighed and said she has lived long enough, and not to beg her to stay if I loved her.”

  “These are early days,” Kate comforted. “Once she has had time to grieve, she will hear you better.” Stilling the comb in her hand, she thought of her own mother. “She will not want to leave you.”

  Catherine turned her head, her lips tight as she fought for control. “You do not know my mother. She is full of hate for the King. Even when I told her that my husband has arranged with the King for us to go to Peterborough and act as chief mourners at the Princess’s funeral she still said she would hate him to her last breath.” Catherine’s shoulders slumped with defeat. “Her Catalina died calling for him—the man who abandoned her, the man who did not care if she died alone, with no kin or friend by her side. You know he would not allow even the Lady Mary to go to her mother?” Catherine bit her bottom lip, her teeth leaving a red mark. “My mother says the Princess thanked her for not letting her die alone like an animal. How can a man be so cruel to a woman he once loved—a woman who bore him child after child?” She rubbed her eyes and sniffed. “I wish now I had never sent word to her. Mayhap, if she hadn’t watched her friend die, she would not think the world is a place she would rather not be. She would not say to me she has had enough of living. That she wants it to end—all the pain, all the grief.”

  Catherine lowered her head, her hands covering her face. Kate stroked her arm, saying the first words to come to mind. “I am your sister, always. I vow that to you.”

  Catherine wiped her face with one hand, while her other one enclosed Kate’s. Her hand was freezing. No wonder, sitting here in a thin shift. Her woollen shawl was no protection for a winter morn. “That is what they said to one another, long ago as dawn broke over Granada before they left their home forever.” Her hand tightened on Kate’s. “Sometimes, with a daughter’s main duty given over to her husband and children, the bond between sisters is greater than that of a mother for a daughter. Let it be always that way for us, Kate.”

  Thoughts of her mother and her stepfather, their arms around each other by the fire at her home, stirred within Kate. Her mother’s words to him:

  One heart, one flesh, one soul

  one soul in bodies twain.

  But lovers were not the only ones to sing the words. True friends did, too. More and more life seemed a mountain that must be faced, to be braved, but without friendship, she climbed in the dark, without a hand reaching out to help.

  With resolve, Kate straightened. “That I vow freely. Now, sweet Catherine, 'tis time for you to end your melancholy and ready yourself for the new day. Pray sit there quietly, my sweet Gossip, and let me do your hair. Then I’ll call the maid to get you dressed.”

  She combed her friend’s hair, all the while yearning for her own mother. She missed her and wished she could speak to her. More than that, she yearned for her mother to hold her—to feel a child again, safe and loved. Now, like it or not, childhood was gone forever.

  With Madge called early one morning to attend the Queen, Kate found herself alone with time to write in her journal.

  The preparations for Katherine of Aragon’s funeral are now well in hand. I think knowing this has improved the King’s temper; most days now, he is tranquil and content.

  My aunt is also merry—in public. But I have heard her speak quietly to Meg Lee about her disquiet, her sense of foreboding. I know the reason for it.

  Jane Seymour is back at court, again attending the Queen. Mostly, my aunt is civil to her, but there are times when she fails to hide her jealousy.

  I was with her when she discovered Lady Jane on the King’s lap. It was terrible. Truly terrible. My aunt yelled at him, yelled at Jane.

  If I could have laughed, I would have when Jane scurried away, escaping in the other direction. She most surely deserves her nickname of “White Mouse.”

  But I couldn’t laugh. Not while the King bristled with anger at Aunt Nan. His face was dreadful. Whenever he is angry, his whole body seems to swell up and his cheeks become fiery in their colour. I do not know how else to describe it, other than I think he becomes a demon.

  I felt ill at hearing his words. He reminded Aunt Nan again that she was to endure as one better than her had once done. Of course he meant Katherine of Aragon—a woman who loved him, just like my aunt. A woman whose death gave him reason to thank God.

  Jane returned to the Queen’s chamber wearing a new gold locket.

  Understandably so, my aunt’s temper was still high after the King’s rebuke, and her suspicions aroused. She asked Jane to show the locket to her. When Jane refused, Aunt Nan snatched it from her neck, snapping the thin, gold chain.

  Jane ran from the chamber, her hand on her neck, weeping. I wept, too, when I spun around to my poor aunt. She stood there holding open a locket with a portrait of the King. Only the King could have given it her.

  I tried my best to comfort Aunt Nan, but I had no words. My poor aunt. She wept and broke her heart, saying over and over, “He promised to be true.”

  The King’s daughter, the Lady Mary, does not help matters. Feeling pity for the grieving girl, my aunt invited her to court. She wrote she would be another mother to her if Mary would only let her.

  A letter from the Lady Mary arrived not long afterwards. My aunt hurled it aside in anger. “My friendship conflicts with her honour and conscience,” she said.

  She paced up and down the room, before she rounded on me as if I was the Lady Mary. “I wrote to her in charity, and this is the thanks she gives me. What do I care? She can go her own way and be done with it. And if she thinks she will do better with her father, then she will learn otherwise, to her grief.”

  Rather than make Aunt Nan angry, I wish the Lady Mary had taken her offer of friendship. Aunt Nan meant well by it. But Madge tells me the Lady Mary hates my aunt for what happened to her mother.

  Why my aunt and not the King? I do not understand.

  There was no abating of the Queen’s troubles. Approaching her aunt’s chambers with Madge one day, Kate heard raised voices, one a man’s, coming from the rooms. They both moved instinctively closer to the wall. The thick, oaken doors made the voices indistinct, difficult to make out, but the anger was real and frightening.

  “Who is it?” Kate whispered.

  Before Madge had a chance to answer, the door burst open and Norfolk stormed out, his long, thin face red and furious. The guards, startled into fight-ready stances, prepared to barricade the open room, their halberds shifting in their hands.

  The Duke of Norfolk turned and shouted one last time, “I warn you, niece.”

  As if suddenly aware he was in a public place, he whipped around, his gash of a mouth shutting fast, calculating eyes darting from one guard to the other. Thrusting his body forward, he stomped off, passing Kate and Madge without glancing their way.

  Madge touched Kate’s arm, her fearful eyes following the disappearing figure of the Duke. “Let’s go to the Queen.”

  When Kate passed the guards, both men had resumed their usual pose holding their upright halberds.

  Deep within the room, her face hidden from view, the Queen stood holding her belly, leaning against one side of the ornate fireplace. Its marble, carved with Tudor roses, their petals painted red and white, seemed to replicate the rubies and gold of Tudor roses the Queen wore around her neck. Words came unbidden to Kate’s mind—a verse Sir Thomas Wyatt had one day scratched out with his pen, as if in pain, in their book of shar
ed poetry.

  And graven with diamonds in letters plain,

  There is written her fair neck round about,

  Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am.

  “Damn him to hell,” Aunt Nan said.

  Kate rushed over to her and took her arm. Her aunt’s skin was milk-white. “Aunt, my Queen, are you ill?”

  Aunt Nan offered her an inscrutable face. “Do not concern yourself, Kate. My child is safe, even if it seems our good Uncle wishes otherwise.” She lifted and then dropped her frail shoulders. “Perchance I should have known better than to try to have it out with him while I am with child, but his continual ill will towards me is no easy matter. He is the brother of my mother, but that does not stop him from showing his hatred.”

  “Madam, you should sit and rest.” Madge took her arm, leading her to the nearest chair. The Queen sat with visible relief, taking from Madge her proffered drink.

  Kate padded over. The strain on her aunt’s face dropped her to her knees beside her. “Pray, can you not speak and tell us what happened?”

  Aunt Nan grimaced. “What help would that do, child? Would it change anything?” She gave a short, self-mocking laugh. “I wish to speak? 'Tis my desire to do so, my desire to speak my mind, that causes our uncle to hate me. He tells me I forget a woman’s proper place and that a good woman is silent. He tells me I owe him obedience because of our kinship.” She shook her head, her disbelief plain on her face. “I, the Queen of England, owe him obedience? A man who beats his wife to the ground because she dares to protest about his mistress?”

  Putting her goblet on the table beside her, she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. For a time, she sat there, her fingers trailing back and forth over her mouth. She sighed. “I hoped when he came to see me today that we could call a truce, for the sake of Elizabeth and the son I carry. Now I see he will never forgive me for acting not a Howard. He forgets I am Queen of England and loyalty to my mother’s family must come second to that.”