The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  It got to me, though; I could see that Katherine hated it and I didn’t know where to look. Elizabeth would roll her eyes, but then she rolled her eyes at anything and everything that my mother or indeed anyone said, although sometimes she’d rouse herself to offer a pearl of wisdom such as, ‘At least you can gorge yourself silly when you’re pregnant, because you’ll end up enormous anyway.’

  In that particular instance, my mother secured a sulky retraction. ‘No, not her,’ Elizabeth tutted, ‘I didn’t mean her, she won’t look hideous, but lots of ladies do.’

  All these comments Katherine endured with a tight little smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  Come the end of every day, in the privacy of their own room, my father would probably be the one to bear the brunt of my mother’s frustration with Katherine (‘Why doesn’t she . . .’ ‘You’d think she’d . . .’): that was my guess, because he had the look, I felt, of a man having to be careful what he said to his wife.

  Visitors proved a rather better bet for my mother. Somehow it was legitimate for Lady Wroughton and Mrs Dormer and Barbara’s mother to be vocal on the subject of Katherine’s rapidly altering physical state (‘Oh, that’s a good-sized bump, Katherine; you’re carrying high, aren’t you?’). It was permissible for them to enquire after her health – her legs and ankles, her back and ribs, her appetite and digestion and bowels, her sleep – and, unbidden, they offered excitable accounts of their own experiences (‘Oh, I had the most terrible . . .’). They asked after her plans, too: names, birth attendants, nurse and wet-nurse. She answered politely but evasively.

  ‘Oh, she’s shy,’ Mrs Dormer sympathised once, when she’d left the room, although it wasn’t quite clear with whom she was sympathising.

  I didn’t think Katherine was shy. Nor did I think that apprehension, natural though it would have been, was what was keeping her quiet. I couldn’t imagine the reason for it. All I knew was that she never made reference to her pregnancy nor mentioned the baby unless prompted, and then barely. And she wouldn’t front-lace: the time for it came, as Moll resisted no opportunity to herald (‘We do need to be letting it all hang out, now, Lady K!’) but somehow Katherine always slipped her clutches and it never got done, was endlessly deferred, and there she was, every day, the fabric of her gown stretched ever tighter.

  I watched my sister-in-law retreating behind that ever-expanding belly and sometimes, just sometimes, felt I should be trying to reach her, felt I should, if only for old times’ sake, be extending the hand of friendship. And then, for want of knowing how else to do it, I’d mimic those visiting ladies, who’d received the best response from her. I’d say something like, ‘Boy or girl, d’you reckon?’

  But she wouldn’t be drawn. ‘We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we.’

  Even if I was direct – ‘Can you feel the baby move?’ – she didn’t really answer, not really.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  I wondered if she was like that with Edward, too. So thoroughgoing was her nonchalance that perhaps it extended to their most intimate moments, or what should ’ve been their most intimate moments: the pair of them in bed in their nightshirts and no mention of what was between them.

  But then, Edward was so often away that summer, the second summer of his marriage; he’d been granted a royal appointment, a first step but a big one, albeit in the household of the royal bastard son. The little boy had become the Duke of Richmond and Edward had become his Master of the Horse, overseeing the stables, which provoked Thomas to take the drastic and reckless step of riding alone to Francis Bryan’s, having left us a note, to beg him to try to secure something similar on his behalf. Generously, Francis took Thomas in.

  Harry had moved to our other house, at Elvetham, to prepare it for him and Barbara after their forthcoming September wedding, and so my father was having to cover both his and Edward’s usual Wolf Hall work. All of which meant that we were largely a household of girls and ladies that second summer of Katherine’s, stitching our way through the days. There was so much to prepare for the baby. Even Elizabeth helped, although she kept to sewing on buttons and attaching lace borders. Dottie and Margie made their first grown-up pieces, and the rather stuttering stitches had a charm of their own. We could have used what was in store – ten babies’ worth of clothes and linen – but the unspoken sentiment was that this baby should, wherever possible, have new. A new generation, a new start. And, anyway, no one was in any rush to unpack what had been put away when the baby John had died.

  Katherine took up the altar cloth again, which we’d all but forgotten. Once, when she’d left the room, Dottie whispered, ‘Why isn’t Katherine sewing for the baby?’

  ‘Oh—’ My mother didn’t look up, ‘Some ladies are superstitious, which is perfectly understandable.’

  Dottie didn’t get it. ‘Superstitious?’

  I cringed as Elizabeth launched in: ‘Tempting fate. The baby might die.’

  ‘Oh!’ Dottie was horrified, her sewing limp in her hands.

  My mother stared pursed-lipped at Elizabeth, who challenged, ‘Well? It’s true, isn’t it?’

  It was to Dottie whom my mother addressed her reply. ‘It is true,’ she allowed, gently. ‘For some ladies, it’s too much to hope for, which is why it’s up to us to do it for them.’

  And indeed there we were, day after day, our white stitches laid down in white cloth like little bones, barely visible but detectable to the touch, while the expectant mother worked on a border of pomegranates, the ripe, split fruits in a ruby thread so rich that it was almost granular, and each one a slow-setting sun, collapsing in on itself.

  4

  Johnny’s birth a couple of weeks early, at the end of August, upstaging Harry and Barbara’s wedding, wasn’t all that was unexpected. Katherine was more surprised than anyone by the delight she took in her baby from the very start. She was bowled over by how lovely he already was.

  My mother let me into the room sooner than she should have, and some of the cleaning up was still to be done. The sheets had been changed but the bloodied ones were still piled by the door, and Lil and my mother were scrubbing floorboards so that I had to step around them and their bucket. I’ll never forget coming into that room, how good a moment it was. Propped up in bed, Katherine was drastically pale but when she smiled at me, that smile went everywhere, even tweaking her ears, and she had dimples. I could have sworn she hadn’t had dimples before.

  Not yet properly swaddled, merely linen-wrapped, the baby lay beside her in the bed.

  I hung back, uncomfortable at being privileged over those who were still cleaning, but Katherine spoke to me across the room: ‘He knows me.’ She was amazed and thrilled. ‘See?’ She gestured to his tiny face, ‘If I speak, he starts looking for me. See?’ Laughter hummed in her words. ‘He doesn’t do it for anyone else, only me; he knows it’s me.’ And then she was talking to him rather than to me, a fingertip to his button nose, ‘Don’t you, eh, hmmm? Don’t you? You know it’s me.’

  I ventured a little closer to see that indeed he did: those dark eyes, so dense as to seem lightless, even sightless, were searching strenuously for the source of his mother’s voice. He was not to be deflected; his life might have depended on it. His expressionless little face had a stern, unforgiving air.

  ‘Oh, he’s beautiful,’ I breathed. He was deliciously, comically weak-chinned, as I now remembered all newborns to be, and there was that glorious full nub of top lip. ‘Who does he look like?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Like himself,’ Katherine said, which felt, to me, like a rebuke. Somehow, I’d already managed to say the wrong thing.

  ‘Oh, it’s too early to tell,’ my mother called cheerfully from the floor.

  Katherine gave a little laugh. ‘I tell you, Janey, I don’t know how I’m ever going to go through that again,’ but she sounded pleased with herself and quite sure that she would indeed be going through it again.

  I didn’t know what to say; I couldn’t begin to imagine what s
he’d been through. It had been more a call to the other ladies in the room, though, because on cue they all clucked and exclaimed: ‘Oh, but you forget,’ and, ‘It’ll be so much quicker next time.’

  ‘Too quick,’ said Mrs Dormer, ’the second one hurts worse,’ and then they were off, all of them, competitively reminiscing on their own labours. Lady-talk. Katherine left them to it, turning her smile to her baby boy and running her fingertip appreciatively over his delicate skull.

  She had to miss Harry and Barbara’s wedding, was still in childbed at the time, not yet churched, but she didn’t seem to mind. Nothing appeared to bother her any more. She was so happy after Johnny was born. In his presence, she shone, her eyes unnaturally bright, and through those eyes she was seeing the world anew because she was seeing it for him: ‘Look at the goat, Johnny! He’s a funny old thing, isn’t he! What’s he up to, over there?’ And Johnny did look, right from the earliest days: ever willing, genuinely fascinated and studious. Katherine had him with her all the time that Mrs Crumpsie, his wet-nurse, didn’t have him, and even when she did, Katherine didn’t leave but stood over them both, chatting away.

  My mother and Katherine began to work as a pair, their wariness of each other vanished, as if it had never been. They consulted each other and collaborated on feeds, sleeps, clothing and outings. When talking directly to Johnny himself, my mother’s manner differed from Katherine’s; there was none of Katherine’s coaxing, no buttering up. My mother was efficient on Johnny’s behalf, as if they were in accord as to what was needed. ‘We have to get you cleaned up, don’t we? We’d enjoy a stroll down to the brook, wouldn’t we?’ He trusted her absolutely, utterly content to lie there and see what she could do for him; and, as far as I was aware, she never failed him.

  Edward was all fingers and thumbs with his little boy but enjoyed making something of his uncharacteristic incompetence and of deferring to his wife: ‘Oops, Katherine, he’s—’

  In response, she’d adopt a certain weariness: ‘Oh for goodness sake, Edward, he’s only. . .’

  Unlike Edward, my father had the benefit of extensive experience and would pitch in, heading for his grandson as he came into the room, scooping him up: ‘How’s my little man today, eh? Learned much about this big, bad world of ours?’

  And Johnny would regard him admiringly: his grandfather, source of all wisdom.

  But it was Dottie whom he seemed to regard as his companion. When he’d learned to smile, he smiled most often for her, and understandably, because the two of them got up to adventures. She was forever negotiating to take him from his mother – ‘Back in a tick, I promise, I absolutely promise’ – and lugged him around in his carry-basket, rustling up wonders for him: a snail, a feather.

  Neither Margie nor Antony participated in any of this: for them, at least in the early days, after the thrill of his arrival, he was less interesting than the dogs. Elizabeth, too: sometimes she even seemed to have forgotten that he’d been born. And me? Well, I did try, I really did try, but could never get him to come to me. I only had to look into his crib for him to burst into tears, and then there was Katherine bustling over to save him from me, to whisk him away, ‘Oh, come on, fusspot.’

  When he was just under a year old, Katherine told us that she was pregnant again, and during her second pregnancy, she was happy; and then the birth went well and everything looked set to be wonderful. It was all so nearly wonderful.

  5

  Ned was born on St Thomas á Becket’s day, two Christmases after the one his mother had lost to a headache when Edward was newly home from France. Two sons in two years, and it was impossible by then to imagine a time before they’d existed. Edward was away at court for Ned’s birth, unfortunately, and then twice more during his first six or seven weeks. Returning to Wolf Hall in late February, he found himself riding through snow, but luckily the frost nails had stayed in the horse’s shoes since the last trip. His wife was already asleep when he arrived but the rest of us had stayed up, and then we kept him up when, it occurs to me now, he must’ve been longing for his bed. As ever, we were keen for news, and, as ever, he obliged, telling us how the princess Mary, who was Dottie’s age, had been at court.

  He’d brought us back a little something, as he always did: this time, a book-sized wooden box of six oranges. We knew of oranges but, until then, had never actually seen one. Elizabeth took one from the box to examine it, to sniff it, then passed it on.

  ‘Eat them,’ Edward encouraged no one in particular, perhaps slightly impatient with us. ‘They are,’ he emphasised,’ for eating.’

  ‘But then they’ll be gone!’ protested Dottie.

  ‘But then I’ll bring you some more.’ He beckoned for the unboxed orange to be handed to him. ‘Share one, then, just the one; share this one.’

  He punctured it with his thumbnail and the air was suddenly alight with its scent. In his hands, it shrugged off its peculiar skin, the woolly pith exposed in its flecks, strands and patches. He prised the segments apart and handed them around. What a contrast, I found, between that startlingly searing scent and the insubstantial squelch inside the tough sheath.

  The following morning, despite his exhaustion, or perhaps even because of it, Edward woke early, too early. Inadequately rested and somewhat at a loss, he guessed I’d be up and came to find me to ask me to do some minor repairs to his clothes. A button was missing from one jacket, a hook and eye from another, and the lining of a doublet was coming away. It was down to me to take care of his laundry while Katherine and my mother were busy with the new baby.

  There we were in the day room, him showing me what needed doing, when Katherine walked in carrying Ned. Until then, she and Edward hadn’t yet seen each other; Katherine had spent the night in the nursery on a mattress alongside the boys because they both had bad colds. She, too, looked exhausted although, as ever, differently from Edward: he was darkened, shadowed and stubbled, whereas she was blanched, which gave her a startled look.

  ‘Oh!’ She was ill-prepared for the reunion, partially dressed as she was and with Ned whimpering and snotting on her shoulder. She demanded of Edward, ‘Did you get that chamlet?’ Presumably she’d asked him to pick up some fabric for her en route. It was as if she’d last encountered him mere minutes before, not a week and a half ago.

  Edward looked hopefully at his infant son, expecting Katherine to lift him away from her shoulder, to turn him and reveal his little face to us, but she didn’t and he was left looking at the baby’s back. Katherine held their son to her like a shield.

  ‘Edward?’ The mention of the chamlet had Edward looking blank: his wife might’ve spoken in a foreign language, or worse, he might not quite recall who she was.

  Then, ‘Oh . . .’ and the heel of his hand to his forehead; he’d forgotten. Katherine tutted, turned, and went back through the doorway with Ned boggle-eyed over her shoulder.

  Edward stood looking after her, stunned. Me, too: I bet no one treated him like that at court. But that was how it had often been, lately, at home between the pair of them.

  ‘Actually,’ Edward said, as if resuming a conversation which we hadn’t been having, ‘I think I’m going to take Katherine along with me next time, to court.’ He spoke with a forced brightness. ‘I think it’s time to be doing that, now I have a room there.’

  I doubted that’d improve relations between the pair of them. ‘Have you mentioned it to her?’ Katherine had always been dismissive of court life, never shown the least interest in it, often rubbished it. In her view, it was all show. Her life, by then, was very much at Wolf Hall.

  There was a notable pause before he admitted, ‘Not yet.’

  Well, I didn’t envy him having to broach it. ‘Perhaps wait ’til she’s in a better mood.’

  He gave an exasperated sigh, as if to wonder when on earth that would be. ‘She’ll just have to get used to the idea.’

  I doubted she’d see it that way.

  He was worried, though, it was obvious. ‘It’ll
only be occasional. It doesn’t look good for her to keep staying away. She needs to make an effort. Philippa can show her the ropes.’ Francis Bryan’s wife, Philippa Spice. ‘And anyway,’ he sounded piqued, ‘you’d think she’d jump at the chance.’

  He looked to me to confirm it: that if it were me, I’d love to go.

  Would I? I honestly didn’t know; I’d never considered it, I really hadn’t. Court wasn’t for the likes of me, I’d always felt, and never would be, and I was probably happy with that.

  ‘She’d have to leave the boys,’ I ventured. That, I felt, was the main problem.

  ‘For a week,’ he protested, pacing to the window and staring moodily into the courtyard, ‘a week or so at a time, that’s all. And only occasionally. And anyway,’ he whipped back around to me, sour-faced, ‘it’d do her good.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that; the punitive note to it.

  ‘Them, too, actually. And they’re—’ He flapped a hand, impatient, dismissive, ‘Growing.’

  Growing all the time, he meant: needing their mother less.

  But they were tiny. He didn’t understand.

  ‘And,’ he said, ’they’ve got our mother.’

  Well, true, she would find it no hardship to have the boys to herself from time to time.

  But this wasn’t a matter of arrangements, about who could care for the boys and for how long. No, Edward and Katherine inhabited two different worlds and Katherine was in no hurry to partake of her husband’s.